We just celebrated our nation’s birthday this last week, and this conjures up many mixed feelings and questions. How do we celebrate a nation that has murdered babies by the millions? How do we celebrate a nation full of corruption and lies and scandals? And on the other hand, should Christians even celebrate our nation, since our citizenship is in Heaven and the Kingdom of God includes many nations?
The short answer is that is a Christian duty to honor and celebrate everything good about our nation, as an extension of our duty to honor our father and mother. Just as we are to honor the law of our father and mother, and not remove the ancient landmarks established by our fathers, so too we are to honor the biblical laws of our land, as well as the good customs and traditions and true virtues of our history and people. And it is this honor and love of our particular fathers that teach us how to honor other people and nations. We can rightly love other families and nations only when we have learned to love our own. We love our neighbor as ourselves.
The root of the word “patriot” or “patriotism” is “patria,” which comes from the word for “father.” Patriotism is love of fatherland. In other words, the root of Christian patriotism is honoring fathers. It is no accident then that as we have become a fatherless nation, our nation has reached a crisis. You cannot despise and hate the fathers in your family and church and then magically end up with faithful fathers in the public square. You get faithful fathers in the public square and a virtuous fatherland worth honoring because family fathers and church fathers faithfully lead and lay their lives down for its virtue. It is only by honoring father and mother that it can go well with us in our land.
So we do not honor the corruption in our land, and understood rightly, every lawful means of resisting that corruption is actually true Christian patriotism. A true Christian patriot hates the evil in his nation because he loves what she ought to be. Likewise, we do not honor the failures and sins of our fathers and mothers, but we remember and celebrate all the good things in faith, asking God that it may go well with us in the land.
Toby Sumpter – July 7, 2024
