Been a little busy lately, and I promise to get back to my review of Jay W. Richards' book. But I wanted to come back with a bang, so here goes. . .
About ten years ago during a National Holiday weekend, I remember our church singing a patriotic song. Upon the beginning of the song people began to stand up and you could almost see a pride well up in many of the congregants as we sang these patriotic songs, especially within the veterans. Now, most of us would think that this would be a non-issue, and in many churches they would be proud of their patriotism. But while many members or many churches would be proud, I was disgusted, because in our church we had the policy where we left standing during worship up to each individual. What ultimately happened when we left it up to the members whether or not they should stand was that they would choose to remain seated throughout the entirety of the service. However, this one day, when we started playing and singing patriotic songs, the entire congregation stood and gave reverence to the United States. However, on every other Sunday throughout the year when we sang songs that were only aimed towards our love and reverence for the Triune God no one ever choose to stand. In other words, our congregants were willing to honor our nation in a way that they refused to honor God, our country was worth standing up for, but our God was not!
This type of thinking is now playing itself out in another arena, as Goshen College (a small Mennonite University near my home) is now refusing to play the national anthem before sporting events after trying it out for the past year. So why is playing the national anthem a problem for Goshen College? Because our National Anthem is a song about a battle in the war of 1812 and the Mennonites abhor war. This is due to the fact that they are serious about the pacifist principles taught by Jesus within the scripture. Now, this is not the first time that a principle of the Mennonite faith has come into conflict with the American culture. For years the school has refused to fly an American flag with the belief that nothing should be above the cross. This was a major problem when 9/11 occurred and one of my friends was doing some electrical work at the school. The workers for the electrical company were so upset that they hung a flag at their worksite they had on the school grounds as a way to protest Goshen’s refusal to fly a flag after such a horrific tragedy. This stance that Goshen College stubbornly stood by was a symbolic way to show that God should come before everything else, including our nation.
So how ought we as Christ followers to live in a society? Can we be patriotic and followers of Christ? Or does one trump the other? First, we have to look to what scripture calls us Christians who live in the world. Peter calls us exiles and aliens in I Peter. In other words, we as followers of Christ do not belong to the world for this world is not our home. Rather it is just where we reside for the time being. Rather our home is with our Father, and while we are in fellowship with him thanks to the actions of His Son, and the work of the Spirit. But despite this, one day we will be called to our eternal home.
So this means that as followers of Christ, we need not care about the current society that we live in, right? No, actually we are told by another biblical figure in the Old Testament that those in exile ought to strive to make their new residence a great nation, and that we are to live in a manner that helps our current residence prosper (Jeremiah 29:7).
But the question then becomes, how can we help our society prosper? To do that we must look back to see how the Jewish exiles helped make the nations that they lived in prosper. I feel that there is no better place in the Bible than to the first six chapters of Daniel, where we are given detailed information on how four young men (possibly three) lived as faithful servants of God and of the empire in which they found themselves. The interesting thing here is that while they had no qualms about serving the empire that conquered them, they made sure that they were going to do it on their own terms; or perhaps more accurately stated, on God’s terms. They made sure that in serving their new land that they would first and foremost serve their god, YAWEH. And the thing is, these men ended up being key players in their new home and took on roles that could help the nation to prosper despite not honoring the gods or practices of their new nation that conflicted with YAWEH.
My friends, this is what we must make sure we do when we serve God and country. We must make sure God is served first and foremost, and then understand that by serving God, we actually serve our country. This was the order that these four men took in Daniel, God first and nation second. This is what I think the Mennonite administration is trying to convey in their abandonment of the National Anthem. There are plenty of teachings of Jesus that promote pacifism and if we are going to take Jesus seriously as a whole, then we must acknowledge that Jesus taught us to love others, not just those who are close to us, but those outside of our ethnicity, and even those who are our enemies. So how is bombing our enemies, or even glorifying the bombing off our enemies through a song glorifying Jesus? Quite frankly it isn’t! This is something that our Mennonite brothers and sisters take very seriously. To them killing is wrong no matter the circumstance. And to glorify violence is to go against the teaching of God, and as a result is putting our worldly standards above God’s standards. However, just because they fail to play the anthem does not mean they do not want the nation to prosper. In fact the reverse is true. I feel that the Mennonites would love nothing more than for this nation to prosper. However, they are not going to blindly accept the standards of this nation which glorifies violence in its anthem. Therefore, the administration is seeking out another way to promote this nation, a way that is also glorifying God as well. And as Christ followers we too ought to make sure that we always serve and glorify our country through God’s principles and not vice versa.
