Patriotism is Love of Neighbor

God made you an American

I love my kids.

I want them to grow up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

I want them to, Lord willing, grow up to be Christian husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, along with all those roles entail.

I want them to be trained and educated as necessary to make successful adulthood a reality.

I want them to be healthy, having a proper relationship with food, exercise, and nature.

I want them to have friends who encourage them to be righteous and loving.

This list could go on for miles, but you get the idea.

“But,” one might say, “shouldn’t you want those things for all kids?”

Broadly speaking, absolutely. But my time and resources are incredibly limited. I can’t help all children to this end. I may be able to help neighbor kids or relatives more than others, and if I can, I will.

But even in that, there comes a point at which I would spread myself too thin and could no longer provide enough resources or attention to my own. Just consider the classic trope of the preacher who spends so much time ministering to others that his own family drifts from the church.

“Love of neighbor” carries an inherent duty to love our closest neighbor—in this case, our children—best.

Now, let’s reframe this.

I love my country and my countrymen.

I want them to know God and worship Him freely.

I want them to be financially stable enough to be able to afford housing and feed their families.

Even more basically, I want them to be able to have families and be culturally encouraged and enabled to do so.

I want their air and water to be clean and their food to be nutritious.

I want them to be safe from foreign threats and domestic crime.

Again, the list could go on…

And, again, someone will say “You should want this for everyone.”

And, again, I do. But I can’t help procure these things for everyone. And as with my children, the attempt to do all of this for everyone means it will be done for no one.

That’s why God gave children to specific parents, and why He gave peoples to specific nations and rulers. They all benefit from the division of responsibility.

By contrast, if it’s in my power to help my neighbor not have to have two working parents with multiple side hustles to afford a house in a crime-riddled city, yet I choose not to do so because I’m somehow above such “carnal” things, you can’t say I love him.

Many Christians have become so gnostic and detached from this life that they believe this is wrongheaded thinking, that “this world is not my home” means we don’t belong to nations. Because we live in an individualistic, rootless society, their logic even seems normal.

But our way of life is an extreme historical anomaly. People and place have long been the predominant human way of life.

Biblically, Hebrews 11:14-16 does not contradict Matthew 23:37 or Romans 9:3-5. Jesus was a Son of David and Abraham. Paul was too. They did not do what we do, pretending we have no such ties.

In the same sense that you have a last name and facial features which undeniably link you to people in this world, so you have a citizenship, language, and culture that does the same.

Others will counter that we as Christians are solely called to evangelize and let God handle the rest. But this mindset, as I’ve discussed recently, is stuck in the first century.

The first century church went out evangelizing, but as they converted people in cities and nations those people weren’t all required to get up and leave on mission. Most of them stayed and did the work of leavening their culture.

We are to be prepared for Jesus to come back at any moment and evangelize to prepare people for that moment, but we are also to help bring about His kingdom to the blessing of our children, our neighbors, and our nations.

Thus, you should love your country.

This does not mean being blindly proud of its obvious and abominable shortcomings, but loving it enough to call it to repentance from them. Nor does this mean jingoistically cheering on one’s own nation at the expense of others.

It is simply to love one’s country to the point that you desire, pray for, and work toward the kind of culture that would make it a blessing to your family and your neighbors.

Wave a flag, light a firework, have a hot dog. Thank God for this country’s beauty and achievements, and pray for its continued improvement to the blessing of our families and our neighbors.