Christians Should Reject Christian Nationalism

 You ever notice when you have the right passion but you unleash it in the wrong direction.

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity:

Wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. … Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.

This is a key point. Wickedness - or sin - is only the morphing of something good. It’s just the pursuit of some good in the wrong way or too much. Every evil that can be done is just a twisted version of something good. So when we talk about passion, God has a plan for us. This plan of God's will be pushed and prodded against until you compromise away God's plan for your life or remain firmly planted in his plan for your life.

Let’s set some framework. 

First, our big commandment. This is what we are to have passion for. 

“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:35-40 (NLT)

Love. An invisible thing but the most important idea. Paul tries to give a good definition to the intangible in his letter to the church in Corinth.

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 

Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. 

When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13 (NLT)

Now, I want to spring with this foundation of love already established into a current news story that holds an idea that I see many falling prey to: Christian Nationalism. 

The headline reads: “Michael Flynn: From government insider to holy warrior" (https://apnews.com/article/michael-flynn-christian-nationalism-investigation-50fa5dcff7f99cf93409fcd6c1357bee)

He's quoted as saying, “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God, right?”

Then it goes on to define Christian Nationalism: “Christian nationalism seeks to merge the identity of Christians and Americans, so that to be a ‘true” American is to be Christian – and a certain type of Christian. The ideology pushes the idea that the United States was founded on biblical principles [which I have no doubt it mostly was] and has a favored relationship with a Christian God, said Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma who studies conservative Christianity and politics. 

I’ll be honest. When I think of what I could compromise to grow my local church, adopting Christian Nationalism would be it. 

Now I find the next sentence to line up with my observations too. “It is distinct from the practice of Christianity, and Perry’s research has found that many Americans who are inclined toward Christian nationalism don’t go to church.”

Perry goes on to say: “This has nothing to do with Christian orthodoxy. It has nothing to do with loving Jesus or wanting to be a good disciple or loving your neighbor or self-sacrifice or anything like that. It has everything to do with Christian ethno-culture and specifically whit Christian ethno-culture.”

Some big ideas there. But the cliff note version. It has nothing to do with following Jesus – loving God and loving neighbor. Instead, it’s a mixed up identity of white and Christian culture. 

Christian Nationalism is something to be avoided.

When we become more passionate for political power and having society shaped the way that we want, when we give up love for that, we are left with a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. In the end, pursuing that over following Jesus results in nothing. Or maybe even something worse than nothing. The destruction of all things God calls us to do as well as His Kingdom being neglected. For if we don’t focus on God and His kingdom, nobody will. 

I have no problem if you think the election was fraudulent. People have thought that my whole life. It's as if we don't remember 2000 or 2016 and now it's wrong to feel that way.

But Christian nationalism is where I draw the line. I will adamantly oppose it.

I get it. I really, sincerely, at the core of my heart do. We all want to be around like-minded people. We want to quit fighting battles with the world. We want to raise our kids around people who share our values.

The place for that isn't the United States though. That’s a misdirected passion. A passion for things that are good invested in the wrong place, which I think is always the source of the greatest atrocities. The place for that passion is following Jesus in your church with your church family. Then letting that love overflow into the relationships around you.

Now, you'll notice the sentence in the articles that says most Christian Nationalists don't go to church. That’s been my observation too. This is where the passion to build a better world gets messed up in practice. That passion to build a better nation, detached from church, produces Christian Nationalism. 

The kingdom of God needs passionate people serving Jesus together. But history shows us that trying to make the nation Christian doesn't work out well. Let's not repeat those mistakes. 

So if you’re flirting with the idea of being a Christian Nationalist, I encourage you to get involved in a church and serve the Kingdom of God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And together, we'll love and help our neighbors to make this world a better place.

You do rightly feel a call to invest your life in something bigger. It's just misdirected if you unleash that passion on Christian Nationalism. Take the humble and serving path modeled by Jesus over the path of the sword and power.

Now, if I was talking to you as a person in a position of authority in the State, my message would be different. I would be telling you to align the state as much as possible to the kingdom of God without oppressing people. Work for the poor. Work for the powerless. Bring about justice. Live in righteousness. And as much as we can do that in our lives, we must. But I’m not addressing this message here to the people who control this land. Instead, in a way, we are the poor and powerless. None of us has the power to get any law changed beyond locally and even then we struggle. We barely have a voice.

But we must recognize that we, as people who have surrendered our lives to Jesus and His will, will sometimes face a state that is opposed to the will of God. And generally, when it does that, it will proclaim that it is doing the will of God. And when that happens, we still do God’s will, and not what the state wants. We see this in the life of Corrie Ten Boom. The Germans were rounding up Jews to put them in concentration camps after conquering the Netherlands. And what did she do? She and her sister rebelled against the authorities and helped the Jews. This is living out the loyalty above all other loyalties.

And resistance to the evil German state was widespread among the Christians in Nazi Germany. Jews weren’t the only people killed in the Holocaust despite that being what we think of when we think of the Holocaust. It is estimated that 3 million Christians were killed in the Holocaust, but it’s hard to find an accurate number, as it is also hard to tell who was executed just because of their nationality regardless of their religion. But they also spied on and targeted priests and pastors. At Dachau, the Germans held 2,720 priests and pastors in the concentration camp. One of them is one of my heroes, Pastor Martin Niemoller. A hero because of his boldness that caused him to be sent away to that concentration camp.

As Dr. Laurence White described it in a message I heard him give:

In 1934, during his second year as chancellor of the German Reich, Adolf Hitler invited the leaders of the evangelical churches of Germany to a meeting in Berlin. His goal was to quell mounting criticism from the Christian community of the Nazi regime and its attempts to subvert the churches. Among those present at that meeting was a fiery young Lutheran pastor from a Berlin suburb…named Martin Niemoller. Niemoller would later recall this encounter as the moment from which he knew that Germany was doomed. Hitler was amiable and deliberately reassuring as he sought the support of these prominent churchmen. He promised the pastors that the position of the church in Germany was safe and secure - that its legal protections, its tax exemptions, and state support would remain unchanged under the Nazi government. Niemoller pushed to the front of the group to confront the chancellor directly and reject his casual consignment of Christians to social irrelevance. Standing face to face with Germany's ruler, the brash young pastor asserted: "Our concern, Herr Hitler, is not for the church. Our concern is for the soul of our country." An embarrassed silence followed his remark and it was immediately evident that Niemoller spoke only for himself. [He, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, stood alone.] His chagrined colleagues quickly shuffled him away from the front of the room. Noting their timid reaction, the dictator smiled as he replied, "The soul of Germany, you can leave that to me."”

And so they did -- Christians looked the other way while innocent people were slaughtered and a nation was led down the path to destruction. (source: http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF16H41.pdf)

For many of them, their loyalty to God was not above their loyalty to the state. They just went along with Hitler. They didn’t want to rock the boat. They didn’t want to cause any outrage. They didn’t want to sacrifice like Niemoller and find themselves also in a concentration camp. They just conformed to the State rather than Jesus. And atrocity followed. That is the end result of the church conforming to the state. It is never good. It empowers the powers and principalities of this world to unleash hell on earth unhindered. When we cave to the pressure to give blind obedience to the state, we become a tool for evil rather than a vessel for the beauty and way of God to flow through. We lose our prophetic voice as we become an example of conformity rather than the countercultural revolution of Jesus.

I propose that loyalty to Biden (or Democrats) or loyalty to Trump is just as spiritually damaging. We shouldn’t give loyalty to anyone above Jesus. 

Martin Niemoller gave the famous quote, which I’m sure that you know even if you don’t know Niemoller:

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up.

This wasn’t some abstract concept for Niemoller. He was then imprisoned by Hitler and served at concentration camps for eight years.  He wasn’t released until he was freed by the allies in 1945.  Unlike his famous peer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Niemoller made it out alive grew old, and eventually died in 1984, spending his life going around the world giving a warning such as this sermon serves here today.

We can easily point the fingers at Christians who compromised the gospel in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, but we have to be careful to not do the same thing here in America.

We have to keep focused on God. And the scary thing is that evil will disguise itself in Scripture, in God language, in sheep’s clothing.

Remember when the devil tried to trick Jesus. The story goes….

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.

During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.”

But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say, ‘He will order his angels to protect you. And they will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.’”

Jesus responded, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not test the LORD your God.’”

Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. “I will give it all to you,” he said, “if you will kneel down and worship me.”

Get out of here, Satan,” Jesus told him. “For the Scriptures say,

You must worship the LORD your God and serve only him.’”

Then the devil went away, and angels came and took care of Jesus. Matthew 4:1-11 (NLT)

Disguising evil into something that seems good. Satan is a master of that craft. 

And we have one right here in front of us. A very similar temptation to the last temptation given to Jesus here. A temptation to control the governments of this world. 

The siren call of the American culture and nationalism is alluring and tough to resist. Where have we compromised? 

We can just say that the battle of loyalties is a thing of the past and deceive ourselves. All eras seem to have moments where the state strives to pull us away from our ultimate loyalty to God.

But no matter the situation, we must always choose faithfulness to God. A loyalty above all other loyalties. We always choose love.

Dirk Willems was one of many fugitive Christians because his doctrine didn’t jive with the Catholics or Protestants during the reformation. Back when churches had control of the states. Eventually, he was arrested and imprisoned for his faith. 

Unlike many others, Dirk escaped from the prison tower he was locked in. He tied together strips of cloth to make a rope, which he used to slide down the prison wall. He set out across the countryside, when a guard spotted him and started chasing him. In Dirk's path of escape was an ice-covered pond. He took the risk and crossed the thin ice safely. The guard – who wasn’t on a prisoner’s malnutrition diet - was substantially heavier. When he crossed the lake after Dirk, he fell through the ice into the freezing water.

[My own thoughts: Yes, Dirk was freed. His pursuer fell into the water! I would take that moment and run to freedom, but Dirk had other thoughts.]

Dirk asked himself, “Was this God's rescue? Has God saved me from my enemies?” Dirk realized the answer was, “no.” For Dirk, this was a call to help someone in need. He believed in Jesus's teaching to love even our enemies. So Dirk turned back and rescued the guard. Dirk saved his enemy. 

Afterward, Dirk was arrested again, placed in a more secure prison, and was burned at the stake.  (source: https://izbicki.me/public/youth-group-questions/dirkwillems.pdf)

How is that for a happy ending? Dirk gave up his life to love his enemy. A loyalty above all other loyalties.

We’re called to place loving God and loving others above all else. No matter the cost. Avoid Christian Nationalism. Use that passion we have for creating a better world to be a better people, loving God and loving one another. 

No Room For Let's Go Brandon In The Church

I don’t know if you saw the video that happened in a church in Texas a few month’s back. I had multiple people bring it up with me in conversations, so I thought it may be worth addressing here. I originally started this that week, but I wanted to give time to distance my thoughts from that moment and to see if I really felt led to preach it. It’s such a touchy subject, but I think that we can and must enter into it with a Jesus perspective. That is sort of what we do in all issues. We enter into them without taking the us versus them views of the world. We refuse to adopt or identify primarily with a worldly tribe. Our tribe is the Jesus tribe, and in that tribe, we passionately view everyone as made in the image of God.

I debated on showing the video and decided not to because it crosses a line for what should happen in a church despite it being a video of something happening in a church. The video itself shows a worship leader encouraging a church to chant “Let’s Go Brandon!” And briefly, for those who don’t know the phrase, a NASCAR racer named Brandon Brown won a race. The crowd started a vulgar chant directed at Joe Biden. It was coming through during the interview and the NBC interviewer said that the crowd was chanting “Let’s Go Brandon!” And so the more socially acceptable chant replaced the vulgar one within days.

So that’s the background.

Now to look at our local context here in the middle of rural Midwest America. I know that if I wanted to grow a club in the disguise of the church, I would preach gun rights, Trumpism, sports, rugged individualism, and, in this case, the idea of Let’s Go Brandon every week. That would grow a church in our community. I see pastors doing that in some places to much success.

But that is not the kingdom of God. It isn’t even close. It’s folk American religion.

As Christians, we often speak truths – we have an obligation to speak truths – always in love - that the community we live in doesn’t want to hear. That is how we change things. We can’t change things for the better by just conforming. We are different than the world around us and one of those ways is shown in how we enter into the politics of the day.

Jesus offers an alternative way to live in this world. We will get to that more in just a bit.

I enter into this knowing that Christians can be Biden or Trump supporters. They can be for or against the vaccination. I personally do struggle with whether a Christian can be for the mandates, but I will offer grace and love to those that disagree with me on that subject. But it makes no sense to me that a Christian would make someone lose their livelihood and ability to provide housing and feed their family, but I talked about that a few months back.

It has always been my goal, whether it has been realized or not, to have a church filled with Democrats and Republicans. Socialists and Libertarians. Even Buckeyes and Wolverines fans. I find in this world of divisiveness that this goal being realized is very hard because everyone wants you to agree 100% with their views or they won’t respect you. And so they’ll go find a church that doesn’t challenge them on an issue or that just agrees with them on it.

Our approach to interacting with the world – as it gets more heated and more full of hate toward people in other tribes has to be different than the way people who don’t know Jesus interact with those that disagree with them. The way we express our feelings about political leaders on the other side of the aisle, whether that’s Trump or Biden – Pelosi, McConnell, DeWine, Holcomb, Whitmer or even local opposition has to be different than the way the world interacts with their opposition.

So let’s look back 2,000 years to Scripture and see if we can get some timeless truths that we can apply today to show how we are supposed to behave in this environment.

In the time that Paul wrote his letters, the world wasn’t a big fan of Christians either. In this passage we are going to read, Paul is writing his young protégé, Timothy, to teach him how to interact with the world as a follower of Christ.

"I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. For, He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone." 1 Timothy 2:1-6 (NLT)

Pray for all people. Give thanks for them. Pray for kings and all who are in authority. This seems to be the exact opposite from what was going on in the church that I’m not showing the clip of.

It’s hard when specific issues are on the line - when we feel that our rights are being violated – to be loving toward the people who we may feel are wronging us or even oppressing us. Yet even in that case, Jesus told us to love our enemies. Bless those who persecute you.

The Jesus way isn’t our normal instincts. It isn’t the way of this world. But it must be the way we handle ourselves in this world.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t call out a lie. This doesn’t mean to blindly follow. This doesn’t mean that you can’t disagree, but it does mean that when you call out a lie, that when you rebel, that when you disagree, you will do it in love.

Another thought that is expressed in Scripture is that we are taught that the prosperity of bad leaders leads to even our prosperity.

Jeremiah wrote:
"This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.” Jeremiah 29:4-7 (NLT)

Again, it’s noted that we should pray for those who harm us.

But this passage provides further clarity.

In a world that may cause us to be disillusioned, we’re called to continue on living. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Marry and have children. Then encourage them to have children.

I like the idea that we are to live in such a way that those around will still believe this world is worth bringing children into. I fear so many are living in such fear, hate, and isolation, that nobody would want to bring children into their world. But we are called to be different.

We live – like Jeremiah said to live in those times – for the prosperity of the evil nation around us. For Babylon.

We are called to be a blessing, even when we feel that the world around us may be opposing us. That’s the Jesus way. A way of not conforming with the oppression of the governments around us. But also seeking for the welfare of the nation we find ourselves in.

We pray for our leaders. We seek their blessing. For in them being blessed, we will also be blessed.

Jesus taught,
“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:43-48 (NLT)

Love your enemies. That’s one of Jesus’ more radical teachings, yet it is one we must exemplify. We must be different than the world around us. We cannot join in on the divisiveness and hate.

It’s easy to love those who love us. It’s easy to love those who are on our side. But Jesus wants us to love all – even those who persecute you. And when we do this, Jesus says that we “will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.”

We as the people who follow Jesus are to be identified by our love. Chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” in a church would tell people who are Democrats that we don’t love them. And we need to not do that. It would say that we are not welcoming. Not loving. And political affiliation is not what we should alienate people with. There may be certain political issues we have stances on that will naturally alienate people just by having our convictions, but the celebrity of politics and attacking an individual should not be one of them.

Personally, I dropped my affiliation with a political party in the last few years. That doesn’t mean that is the right or wrong approach. It’s just how I figured out how to navigate these times. I stand up for issues and don’t have a loyalty to political people or a party. I have found this liberating. It may look different for you as you learn to navigate these times. That’s okay, but your political life needs to be defined by love. Love for the person attacking you. Love for the person opposing you. Love as a root of the views you have.

If we were a massive congregation, I would get us all to start chanting, “Bless Joe Biden.” Then we could put that up on Youtube for the world to see. For that is what the sentiment of the church should be toward our President and all other political leaders, whether they are on the side of the issues we want them to be or not. For as Jeremiah noted regarding Babylon, “For its welfare will determine your welfare.”

Following Jesus really isn’t about getting a counter video on Youtube though. It’s about us living this Jesus life when it’s hard. In our daily lives. And it’s so different than the world around us.

Muhammad Ali said in The Greatest: My Own Story: “I'm a fighter. I believe in the eye-for-an-eye business. I'm no cheek turner. I got no respect for a man who won't hit back. You kill my dog, you better hide your cat.”

And that sentiment resonates with us. Vengeance is really a carnal instinct. It comes naturally. But forgiveness and love of enemy, like Jesus shared on the cross, is so difficult yet so divine. Redemptive and healing. Kingdom bringing.

The world says vengeance. And then I hear the whispering voice of God telling us this is why I call you to love your enemies. To bless those who persecute you. To pray for those who wrong you. To forgive those who need forgiven. We are called to break the cycle of violence and hate. When Jesus, hanging on the cross and dying, can declare, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do", I can do the same. I can forgive the monsters who seem unforgivable. I can forgive those who want to or have wronged me. Who oppose me.  I can live in this kingdom of faith. I can be an exile in this sad, foreign land bringing light and hope.  We are, as the Barbara Johnson first said, Easter people living in a Good Friday world.

So when it comes down to it, even when we are going through the worst circumstances, we are called to remain loving and forgiving. Because we know that following the death of Jesus on Friday comes the resurrection on Sunday. We know that God is at work turning what is meant for bad into good. God brings that about through us living in the land of faith as Jesus did. As exiles in our materialistic world. And living to bring about things that are better than the current reality shows us.

Eugene Peterson wrote: "Believing without loving is what gives religion a bad name. Believing without loving destroys lives. Believing without loving turns the best of creeds into a weapon of oppression. A community that believes but does not love or marginalizes love, regardless of its belief system or doctrinal orthodoxy or “vision statement,” soon, very soon, becomes a “synagogue of Satan” (page 261 of Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.)

Our belief, when mixed with love, brings about the will of God even in the darkest of situations. Our lives aren't typically as dramatic as Jesus' life. We probably won't be executed by society like Jesus was for not conforming to their standards, living differently, and teaching revolutionary ideas. But the call to love in all situations is still there. We will be wronged. We will have people hurt us, intentionally and unintentionally. We need to still echo those words of the perfect exile, who while be murdered on a cross said, "Father, forgive them." We can forgive those who seem unforgivable. Even when they know not what they do. We must forgive those who seem unforgivable. We must love our enemies. We must bring a different flavor into this world. We are the ones to stop the cycle of hate in personal relationships and in the world at large. If not me, then who? If not you, then who?

Yet to do that, I think there is one point we must grasp: We are all sinners. And Jesus has died for and loves us all. We may individualize the death of Jesus a little too much in saying that Jesus loves me. It's true that Jesus loves me, but he also loves the people we love the least. He didn't just die for you and me; He died for everyone. This means that the person who you aren't forgiving is worthy of forgiveness just as much as you are worthy of it. They are also loved by God.

CS Lewis taught, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

This is the route to a better world.

Jesus is teaching an exile way of living. It's different than the ways of the world. Praying for leaders we don’t like and asking God to bless them when the world around us is saying the exact opposite is hard. Loving our enemies does not come naturally to us, but many of the exile things don't. Many things in the way of Jesus don’t. That's part of being an exile. We're in a culture that teaches us incorrectly on how to deal with being wronged. But Jesus is God in the flesh. And I concede that the creator of all of us knows the best way that we should live. And that is to love our enemies. To pray for those who lead us – even if we feel that they persecute us.