As we think about the blessing that God has bestowed on our country and the wonderful principles of freedom that have existed here for many years, we should be grateful. We should always seek the good of the place that God has placed us. We should also acknowledge our faults. To do so requires an honest assessment of one’s nation.
American culture as a whole rejects God. Paul described a culture in his day that closely matches our own (Romans 1). He said that they did not retain God in their knowledge but willfully rejected him. Because of this they rejected the rules that God has written on the hearts of man and revealed in Scripture and Nature. And God gave them over to vile affections. Are we like them? Paul listed some of the sins of this evil culture and we are guilty of many. We disparage God’s image image through murder of innocent children and engage in all manner of sexual license. We encourage disobedience in children. We love violence and profanity. We worship sports, and deify celebrities. We are covenant breakers and full of envy and unrighteousness. America has done much good in the world, though it has always had faults. But American culture today is not righteous. It can be transformed but until then it will remain evil.
When you look at your country today I invite you to remove the lens you may have viewed it through in the past. Just it through God’s lens and not through nostalgia. Look at it for what it is, a pagan nation. Do not look and despair as one who has no hope but look on it as a place in great need of the light of the Gospel. We must not let our love of country supersede our love of God. We must be willing to lose our nation for the sake of Christ. Anything less is idolatry. We no longer need to “preserve” America, we need to revive it. Many wish to preserve some of the morality we have discarded and view losing our freedom as one of the greatest evils of the day. But there is a greater evil than losing one’s country and that is losing one’s God. As believers let’s love the place God has placed us, but let us not love it for its own sake, but for the sake of the God who has placed us here. The only way to save America is to point her to the Savior.
by Nathan Oppman
