HEARING GOD’S HEART ABOUT GOD & COUNTRY
As we prepare to celebrate the founding of our beloved United States of America this month, my heart goes out to those who seem to be struggling with whether they view it as their beloved country or not. And I get it. We, like every other country in our weary world, have some serious issues. And things can get very confusing and adversarial when we talk about such things. But let’s give it a shot to hopefully help us celebrate our nation . . . together . . . in heart. I start with my Avalon.
My last four car purchases in the last twenty years or so have been Avalons. Why? Because I really don’t like car shopping, and those were the cars my dad had been buying in his latter years. In short, if my trusted dad thought they were the best, that was good enough authority for me. Hold that thought.
And once I bought my first Avalon, I began seeing them all over town like I never had before. Wow! They must have been talking to my dad, too! Uh, no. I just had Avalons on the brain for the first time in my life. Let’s hold that thought, too.
Now, I must tell you that being a grown man when it came to car shopping in those years, I did look at other vehicles and even bought a stray Dodge, a stray Pontiac, and a stray Buick as second cars, but never a Ford. Dad had a bad experience with a Ford purchase in the sixties and banned them from our family when I was about eight years old. That, apparently, got stuck deeply in my craw and has stayed there, even in the face of irrefutable evidence that Ford has made many excellent models since then.
My Avalon saga is just one of tons of examples of how logical fallacies and cognitive biases impact what we do and believe in heart about everything in life from our cars to our country. For example:
Appeal to Authority. Believing something is right only because a selected (cherry picked) “expert” says so. In my case, my dad.
Cherry Picking. Choosing sources, quotes and evidence that support a premise, argument, or conclusion while sometimes ignoring or belittling alternate evidence and views.
Attitude Polarization. Entrenching ourselves in a viewpoint we’ve openly committed to and even doubling down in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
So, when anyone is asked, or you ask yourself to what degree you truly appreciate living here in the United States of America, what gets stirred up in your gut? Really?
This is where cherry picking, appeals to authority (parents, teachers, schooling, historians, Founding Fathers, and founding documents, etc.), attitude polarization (due to wounds, indoctrination, prejudice, etc.), and so many more biases come into play. And that would be in all of us, my friends.
We all have attitudes and perceptions on real issues that get stuck in our brains that we tend to see everywhere like my Avalons. Varying degrees and acts of political corruption, social injustice, financial inequity, healthcare and election fraud, gender bias, systemic racism, ethnic exclusion, humanist indoctrination, and conspiracy theories are a few obvious examples. When we cherry pick and focus on any of those, then our hearts cannot help but conclude that America is not so great and certainly not so beloved.
On the other hand, if we cherry pick and focus on our country’s founding ideals, designs, hopes, and honest efforts to live out and even die for those designs as a nation since our inception—even in the midst of our inevitable struggles, complexities, and inequities (real life)—then our hearts can be grateful for a country that strives to be the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Some of our Founding Fathers put it this way:
“All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. . . And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance? . . . We have been assured, sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this.” – Benjamin Franklin
“I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large…” – George Washington
“I hold the precepts of Jesus, as delivered by himself, to be the most pure, benevolent, and sublime which have ever been preached to man.” – Thomas Jefferson
“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.” – Abraham Lincoln
Cherry picking our serious issues to define us as a nation is not any more valid, useful, or compassionate than defining our families, friends, and even ourselves by our problems. We are much more than that.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
God Acknowledgement was our Founding Fathers’ middle ground between their rejected premise of God Establishment (establishing a state religion with a particular God like England did) and the rejected premise of God Exclusion (the idea that there is no God or that He is not involved in nation building and protection).
This was an incredibly wise, balanced, and gracious foundational concept on which to build “One nation under God.” And this is why we do have freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to pursue opportunities, and freedom to cherry pick—the good and the bad— to cultivate a humble love and loyalty for our country (or not), especially when we have many problems to solve. My hope and prayers are that we can find a way to do it together. Shall we?
Very grateful for our God and country,
Pastor Mark
