Conflation

I am tired of the conflation of Christianity with the American way of life. It is quite possible to be a good Christian and not love the United States (as evidenced by the many Christians in other countries) and also possible to be a good American and not be a Christian (as evidenced by many of my fellow citizens). You also don’t have to agree with everything and have no criticisms to show love and/or allegiance.

I thought it was pretty bad in the 1980s, but these days, many seem to act as though true Americans must be Christians. And that Christians must be of a particular political persuasion in this country in order to be considered true believers. Neither is true.

The gospel, or good news, of Jesus Christ is about how God came to save us even though we little deserved it (in fact, deserved the opposite). But some seem to think that God picked them because they are specially deserving, almost as if they are God’s gift to God.

Listening to some out there, you would think that people are valued/valuable because they have power or success or wealth. But Jesus came to preach the good news to the weak, the forgotten, the poor.

The good news, as some would have it, is that nothing bad ever happens to Christians (the right kind of Christians, that is) except maybe, the persecution of hearing ‘happy holidays’ at Christmas time. If you read the Bible, however, you see that righteous people can suffer a lot, and not because they have done something wrong. Bad things happened to Job, the prophets, Paul, the early believers, and most especially, Jesus. Jesus perfectly obeyed God and because of that He died.

Another idea is that God wants us to be rich and we need to go get that money. But while God’s blessings sometimes come in material ways, God wants us to have treasure in heaven, not on earth. And the treasure that Jesus talked about was to be with Him and to love Him and love people.

We are not to hate those who hate us and seek their downfall, but to love them and do good to them.

We are not to hate the oppressed but to seek to remove the oppression and at least provide some relief.

We are not to seek our own advancement but to seek the glory of God – which is to display His love and light.

There is a lot of malice and anger coming from people who claim to follow Jesus – this should not be.

And people who claimed to trust in Jesus to protect them from the coronavirus claim to be fearful of other people made in God’s image because they are not from this country and/or not of the right complexion.

Jesus said His kingdom was not of this world, but so many who claim His name want all the world’s wealth and power for themselves. We have sold ourselves to the notion that the best thing for America is for Christians to get power and wealth.

We Christians need to re-read the Bible and spend more time with Jesus (like in the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7) to be more like Jesus. We Americans need to re-read the Constitution (including ALL the amendments) and remember that our greatness comes from our true liberty of accepting all people. We ALL need to remember that Christianity does not equal American and American does not equal Christianity.