I love my country, and I’m proud to say that on our 250th birthday. But I haven’t always been where I’m at today.
I grew up in military city – San Antonio, TX. The Baptist school that I attended for middle and high school was just minutes away from Randolph Air Force Base. Naturally, many of my peers’ parents served there and it wasn’t uncommon to hear the sounds of jets going over our school. We said the pledge of allegiance every morning. I learned songs like “God Bless America,” and “America the Beautiful.” A painting of “The Prayer at Valley Forge,” depicting George Washington praying on bended knee hung in the school’s front office. The National Anthem was sung often. Our government/economics teacher would teach us about the merits of capitalism over communism and how the U.S. had beaten the Soviet Union.
When we were in 8th grade, we had the chance to go to Washington D.C., and see the sites – Mount Vernon, the Capitol, the White House, all of the famous memorials, the Smithsonian museums, and more. This was about 2005-2006, and our country was in the midst of the Iraq War, and so a particular memory from this trip stands out: one of the students on the trip, her brother had been deployed to the Middle East. When we came to the Vietnam Memorial and saw all of the names of those who had died in that terrible war, she broke down out of fear for what would happen to her own brother. I still haven’t forgotten that.
Love of God. Love of Country. That was the environment in which I was raised.
Then I went to college.
In my first semester, I remember getting into it with a Mennonite student who said he refused to place his hand over his heart and would not sing when the National Anthem was played at ball games. What was wrong with him?
The American history professor, he had a large poster on his office door of a a Native American with the caption “fighting terrorism since 1492.”
In our Bible and ethics courses, we’d hear about the merits of nonviolence and pacifism over and against just war theory, the military, home defense, etc. (As someone from the city, I always found that was convenient to speak positively about pacifism when living in a safer, more rural environment. I too, am a pacifist when I visit Hillsboro, KS, a town of 3,000! On that subject, in the classroom far more questions were raised than were ever answered).
We were assigned Greg Boyd’s Myth of a Christian Nation which critiqued support of the U.S.’s involvement in the Middle East in the name of Christ. I was challenged by it. I’d agree with one page, and then disagree with the next. … all this to say, the simple patriotism of my upbringing was being greatly challenged during these years.
Fast forward to pastoral ministry in California 6 years later.
Like many, the years 2020-2021 were a wake up call for me. From the pastoral side, working in those years were like going through a triathlon from hell: the George Floyd protests/riots, a contentious presidential election, and the pandemic. It was exhausting, and I give thanks to God that I was an associate, not a senior pastor during those years.
Nevertheless, it was still difficult from the church perspective. It upended ministry. It caused relationships to be strained. I learned later, when I’d visit home in Texas, that what we were going through in California was that much more severe in comparison to what many in the country were experiencing.
But it was during that season, that I even saw peers from high school speak online about how racist and fundamentalist our Christian education/environment had been.
So much of the news and political discourse told us about how horrible and wicked this country actually was. I saw other churches get fractured over all of these issues (thank God, the church I was serving in did not). Had I greatly missed something? Was I in a box, so contextualized that I was not seeing what so many others did?
So I started reading more and more about American history and the history of racism in this country. I had read gobs and gobs of theology in seminary, but very little on these subjects. All I had to work on was what I had learned in grade school. Book and documentaries and documentaries became my friends (if God didn’t call me to be a pastor theologian, I certainly would have become a history professor). While my education had focused on major conflicts, like the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI and WWII, now I was being exposed to the history of Jim Crowe, that many of our founders were slaveholders, the complicit nature of many in the American church towards history and racism in the 18th-20th centuries, etc., many of the ugly things I either wasn’t taught or didn’t have ears to hear in grade school.
Compound this deepening perspective with having lived through vitriolic political discourse particularly since 2015, and I was jaded. As a pastor, I could speak about being a “citizen of the kingdom of the kingdom of heaven” (Phil. 3:20-21), but with a bit of embarrassment about being a citizen of this country.
Then we moved to South Dakota 4 years ago.
Perhaps it was the detox that came from moving to the Great Plains and seeing that the sky was blue again (there was always constant smog in California’s Central Valley …but the rest of the state is beautiful!),
Perhaps it was simply the good members of Bethesda church were I serve who rubbed off on me…
Perhaps this was due to seeing the concern in one of our members eyes because her sons were serving in the navy/air force on a submarine and recognizance plane in the Pacific,
Perhaps it was seeing how one of our members was dutifully and faithfully South Dakota legislature out of care for our state,
Perhaps it was meeting other transplants who were frustrated with their experiences in other parts of the country, and so they had moved small Huron, SD, of all places (!),
Perhaps its was watching the older ladies put up some star spangled decor in our church lobby in the summer months simply out of gratitude for the country God has given us,
Perhaps it’s been how I’ve come across several internationals who are more appreciative of the freedoms they’ve seen here than they have in their own country or origin,
…but I could feel the pendulum in my posture towards country begin to level out: neither uninformed, naive acceptance nor wholesale, jaded rejection of this nation, but rather appreciation with a deeper perspective.
So where am I at today?
Like about 2 million others, Stephen Hopkins, who came over on the Mayflower way back in 1620, is my Great Grandfather several times over. He signed the famous “Mayflower Compact” which said:
“Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation…”
Today, we have a country where for those of us as Christians, we get to have what Hopkins and others set out for – we live in a land where we have both a “civil Body Politick,” but also a land where we are still free for “advancement of the Christian faith” without reprisals. For that I have the utmost gratitude. In contrast to many preachers throughout the world, do not get up to preach on a Sunday morning and ever think, “This could land me in jail today.”
That is a precious thing. Religious freedom is a precious thing. And it has been costly for us to have this freedom along with the rest of our unalienable rights that have been given for the endeavor of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Consider this: in God’s sovereignty, there have been thousands upon thousands of people – many Christians, but many not – who in our nations’ history have given the ultimate sacrifice so that Christians can live in an environment to worship freely week after week. That is truly God’s strange, gracious providence at work right there. Why has God given us this, but not our brothers and sisters in Nigeria who are being killed as I write this? Our only response should be gratitude.
Is this country perfect? No.
Do our founding fathers and many other American heroes have clay feet? Yes. Only Jesus doesn’t. Don’t we know that?
Are there dark spots in our nation’s history? Oh yes.
Are there wars we should’ve never been involved in that have caused unimaginable harm? Also yes, unfortunately.
Have various people groups been subjugated, even while our Declaration of Independence has said “that all men are created equal”? Yes again – and make no mistake, many of the founding fathers felt this very tension at the time in 1776.
But is America still the best deal in town? That is my conviction.
Are we privileged beyond imagination unlike many in the world? You better believe it.
Do we possess in our origin story and founding documents ideals, many rooted in the Christian faith but are self evident to all, that should be commended? Amen!
God’s providence has held us together when we haven’t deserved it time and time again.
And I’m grateful to Him for all he has done to preserve us, even as he has taught me more and more to see how as a Christian, my role in the church is to be a light on the hill for our fellow citizens around us.
So tomorrow, I’m going to climb into that pulpit, and preach out of the Psalms the sermon for the day. It will be all about Jesus, as I strive for Sunday after Sunday. But before I begin, I’ll be happy to say: Thanks be God for the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Let us therefore, Christian friends:
Reject cynicism of country.
Reject idolatry of country.
But embrace Christ first as a citizen of the kingdom of God, and then afterwards, you will find yourself being the citizen of this country that you were supposed to be all along.
(If you find this beneficial, feel free to share this post. God bless!)
Aaron Garza 