Dying to Self

Why America Is No Longer Great

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When you write a published title to anything and call it “Why America Is No Longer Great,” you must establish a baseline for greatness in a nation. Most Americans today have in their minds a vague concept of what greatness looks like. As someone nearly a half century old, the image I envision mirrors that of the old Ronald Reagan “Morning in America” ad, considered by many to be the finest political ad ever created—though I admit that recalling ads is perhaps a sign of the greater problem.

Fact is, there are no inherently great nations. A nation is nothing more than a collection of people and their work and ideas.  So it’s the people who must be of some Olympian caliber if we are to test the definitions and say that a nation is great.

But then, defining a nation as great by claiming its people must be is something of a bait and switch. People, in and of themselves, are not great. No inherent greatness exists in fallen men and women.

Fact #2: Only God is great. To the extent that people reflect God’s greatness, will they be great, and subsequently their nation.

All greatness comes from God. Period.

This past week, we watched a major political party suffer a seizure over the omission and re-addition of a lone reference to God in the party platform. In addition, many in that party could not see fit to acknowledge the spiritual home of two major religions. That party’s whitewashed faith statement reads like something espousing liberal use of a rabbit’s foot, four-leaf-clover, and upright horseshoe.

The opposing party, on the other hand, refers to God often. That said, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the party does so in the same manner that a pimply-faced teen guy drops mention that he and the high school’s much-admired football QB are chums, the trolling for chicks barely contained and obvious. One thinks that for all the talk of faith by that other party, a quick drain of the trust fund would reduce that faith to zero.

Changed in 1956 from E Pluribus Unum, the official motto of the United States of America is In God We Trust. You wouldn’t know it from the character of Americans today though. Sure, we talk a great deal about God, but the nature of Americans as practicing God-fearers that so impressed visiting Europeans in the early 19th century is largely vapor today. Instead, we seem to be obsessed with a thousand petty ideals that have as much to do with God as ichthyology has to do with cyclery. I would suspect that a contemporary visit from de Tocqueville would elicit an astonished “What the hell happened?”—though in the French equivalent, of course.

Maybe hell IS what happened.

The truth is simple: Because we Americans are no longer a God-fearing people, we don’t reflect God’s greatness as we should. Therefore, we, as a people, are no longer great. And neither is our nation.

Do any great nations exist? By the definition I offer, probably not. I say probably because the concentration of truly God-fearing people on this planet seems to be shifting to the East. One could make a case for South Korea. Oddly, at least to most Americans, China is emerging as a land of great faith, with its revival-fueled churches.

And yet, even in the nations of the East, one can see the rot that infected the heart of America taking root. Materialism and self-centeredness are growing at a frightening rate, as America foists its fallen ideals on other parts of the world.

Because we once understood that God alone is great, Americans once reflected greatness. And because the people mirrored greatness, so did America the Nation.

I wish I could say that America was still great. Perhaps our nation can be again. But that will happen only if We The People turn, with all humility, back to God.

The Question Ignored By Christian Authorities, Leaders, Pundits, and Bloggers

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The Internet is filled with words. The Christian section of it too.

To waltz into the Christian ghetto online will get you beaten about the head and neck with every sort of opinion, doctrinal refinement, and thought balloon. Yet it seems to me that for all the punditry and supposed solutions to all of life’s problems that the online Church says it answers, almost every source of solutions ignores the foundational question that most people in the world today ask:

Does anyone care that I exist?

Sadly, that’s not a question we are answering well in the contemporary Church. We can say “God loves you,” but we don’t offer most people much flesh and blood proof of that truth.Lonely in a crowd I suspect it’s all too common for a person to walk into a typical church on Sunday with that question burning in the heart and leave an hour later with it unresolved—and perhaps even unadressed entirely. That a person can be utterly alone in a church packed with people…well, it happens, doesn’t it?

So what difference does all the talk on the Internet make if all these authoritative voices have so little impact on that most pressing of all inquiries?

The tangential issue that bothers me most about that unresolved question is that I wonder if any of the Christians behind the voices on the Internet (and outside it) even bother to wonder what it is like to be someone else. Do we ever put ourselves into the lives of other people? Do we consider how they live, struggle, cope, and adjust?

It doesn’t seem as if we do. What else explains the hamfisted way in which we deal with others? What else answers how agendas, programs, and initiatives steamroll real people? Or how people can encounter us and not be changed by the Jesus we say lives in our hearts?

Other people simply are not on our radar.

I am convinced that the only thing that will snap us out of our cocoons of self is personal tragedy. We have to suffer greatly before we begin to wonder how other people live, especially if we find ourselves alone in the midst of that suffering.

I would think that it wouldn’t have to go that far, that the Holy Spirit would be enough to enlighten us to the need for dealing with humanity’s brutal question, but it doesn’t seem as if He is getting through to us. Not that He is somehow insufficient, only that we stuff our ears with “our lives” so as to block His shouts.

Someday in the American Church, a group of people will wake up and help others answer the question of whether or not anyone genuinely cares if they exist. Those pioneers will demonstrate that care too.

It can’t happen soon enough. More power to ’em.

Edelen’s Theory of Inverse Evangelistic Zeal

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The theory:

The more a Christian uses labels for perceived foes, the less likely that Christian will be to evangelize others, particularly those so labeled.

Talk to any Christian, especially someone who identifies as evangelical or born again. If that person descends to always labeling people in conversation who are believed to be working actively against Christian progress (feminists, homosexuals. liberals, humanists, etc.)Labels, the less likely that Christian will be to engage those perceived foes in an evangelistic context. Instead, those labels serve as a distancing mechanism that permits the Christian to relegate those perceived foes to an “enemies of Christ” context that excuses the Christian from evangelizing them and helping lead them to Christ. Also, in general, those same Christians will be less likely to engage all people evangelistically, even those who do not fall into perceived foe groups.

I’ve been a Christian for 35+ years now. The older I get, the more this theory seems to be true.

In summary, if you are the kind of Christian who tends to lump people into categories, you will have less evangelistic zeal.