“Through much of
the last century, America's faith in freedom and democracy was a rock
in a raging sea. Now it is a seed upon the wind, taking root in many
nations.” George W. Bush, Jan., 2001.
The media is that
wind. And we now have the opportunity to sow the seeds of democracy,
and the personal freedom that it provides, to all the people of
earth. But it should be the people, the common folk, not the
government who sow those seeds. In other nations where tyranny
reigns, the government sings its praises and intimidates the populace
to do the same. Fear is induced to keep the people singing those
false praises---false because in secrecy those people whisper about
the hypocrisy of their government. Their “loyalty” is loud in
proportion to their fear of disloyalty. They force themselves to
believe that which they dare not disbelieve. In America there is no
fear of disloyalty to the government, and God forbid that there ever
should be. But there should be loyalty, free and uncoerced, because
this nation has brought something very valuable into the
world—unprecedented prosperity and personal freedom. We have the
blessing of a government that is divided against itself--something we
should celebrate rather than lament. The governments of North Korea,
Russia and China are not divided against themselves. Division is not
allowed. Everyone must be loyal to the one party, which comprises the
government in its entirety. There can be no dissenting voices. And
there is no power above the government—no “one nation under
God” from Whom our
“inalienable rights” come [not the government].The
division and dissension within American politics keeps the government
from gaining the power to erode the freedoms of its citizens. Unity
in government is not something our Founders envisioned, but rather
the good governance that is forged in the fires of open
dissension—freedom of speech and press; three branches and
eventually two parties to contribute to the spreading of power. Let
the politicians ramble on while we enjoy the freedoms their
wranglings have afforded us , and let’s tell the world what a good
thing we’ve got here and encourage them to read our wonderful
Constitution [and we should read it more ourselves, and celebrate it
and protect it as it has protected us for two centuries—something
no other system of government can claim.] We must not stop examining
ourselves as a nation, and exposing our sins. This is necessary in
maintaining our republican democracy. But if we define ourselves by
our problems and fail to see the tremendous good that has come
through our Founding Fathers and this nation, then we will not have
the loyalty and healthy national pride necessary to be all that we
have the potential of becoming, not only for ourselves but for all
the peoples of earth living under tyranny. We must fight against self
loathing and wallowing in regret and self condemnation. We must stop
looking for the person, people or party to blame. We must look
instead to the amazing accomplishment of our Founders: they were
geniuses of government with a profound understanding of the dangers
of power. We must receive with gratitude all they have given us and
take it to new levels, as we have in fact been doing [the Civil War
and the Rights Movements for women and Afro-Americans]. We the people
must be good, which the French historian DeTocqueville recognized as
the source of our strength. We need the vitality of an authentic and
sincere Christian faith nourishing that goodness. Without it we
drift, unanchored into many forms of darkness such as we see in its
evolved forms in other nations and in the worst of ourselves. We need
to be sincere in understanding Jesus Christ—His teachings and His
heart. And we must try to spread this understanding to the world—to
encourage the increase of the Family and Kingdom that He instituted
and informs. This is parallel to being evangelical about democracy
and our blessed form of government because, just as our democracy was
born and nurtured in the fertile soil of Judeo-Christianity, only in
that same fertile environment can democracy thrive. This is true
because governments do not transform the human heart. They can only
enslave or constrain it by force. Only Christ transforms the heart of
a human, making him someone who can be a safe and proper steward of
freedom. Without the constraints of the Love of Christ, there can
ultimately be no freedom. The human heart is too fraught with evil
seeds that subtly grow, without those constraints, into something
that is monstrous and destructive for the human family. Surely we
have enough recorded history and evening news reports to convince
even the most optimistic humanitarian of this truth.
I am a proponent of
Christianity because I am so thankful for what has been wrought in
its Spirit, both for me and my loved ones personally, but, on a
larger scale, for the government that was born in its Spirit; a
government that has provided its citizens unprecedented freedom and
prosperity. I am alarmed to see the fading of the Light of Christ in
our nation. I see in this spiritual regression the natural parallel
of national shame and self-loathing—a deep unrest that strains for
change, just as happened in the Bolshevik Revolution, which led to
millions of deaths to forge a new government that has now crumbled
under the weight of a different manifestation of the same evil that
it sought to destroy---an evil that is undiscernable and overpowering
outside of Christ. I pray for a new awakening of reverence for
Christ, love for each other and gratitude to replace the insufferable
suffering of entitlement, feelings of victimhood and deprivation. I
pray that we will come to see Christianity as the amazing, liberating
and empowering gift that it truly is---perhaps the only theology on
earth that has the power to deliver us from the worst that is in us
while preserving the beautiful uniqueness of various personalities,
cultures, races and nations. I pray we can see the revolutionary
power in the Spirit of Christ to channel our desire for a better
world in the only healthy direction---away from hatred, blaming and
the violent attacks against the old order in order to establish the
new, accompanied always by bloodshed and misery, leading only to
doomed new forms of the old order, managed by a younger generation of
blind fools who thought they were doing the world a favor, or,
better, laying in the bloody dust of defeat like the Nazis, having
been overcome by a better and more powerful force, which is no less
vulnerable to the same subtle evil that blossomed into Nazi Germany,
Stalin’s Russia, and even North Korea. Christianity in its true
manifestation is our national immune system against such regression.
I don’t see what can substitute for it except more laws and more
powerful enforcement of those laws, constraining the growing
frustrations and hatred of people who cannot love each other through
their differences as Christ commands.
Mark Graham 5/30/20
