I love America.
I really do. I am proud to live in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”. I have been to a number of other countries and in my humble opinion, none compare to the United States of America. I also see no problem with being a Christian and having a healthy sense of national pride.
But there is a big problem when the two get intertwined.
As Christians, we believe that we live in two overlapping realities at once- the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man. Our aim is to see God’s Kingdom penetrate the Kingdom of Man through acts of love, justice, mercy, and grace.
Our primary allegiance is to the Kingdom of God and that Kingdom includes every nation, tribe, ethnicity, faith, creed, color, and tongue. In the Kingdom of God, all of our “tribal distinctives” fall to the wayside. As the Apostle Paul so clearly points out in his letter to the church at Ephesus, in Christ there is no slave or free, Jew or Greek, American or Australian, black or white, gay or straight, blue collar or white collar, poor or rich…. but all are one in Jesus. That doesn’t mean we loose those unique defining factors that make us who we are, but those identities become much less central to us. Our true self is rooted in our identity as partakers in the Divine Nature, being united with Jesus Christ. Our common unity and bond with one another is found in the love of God and the reality that we are all his Children created in his image.
Categories: Americas, Religion, Separation of Church and State
I could not understand the following part in the opening post:
[As the Apostle Paul so clearly points out in his letter to the church at Ephesus, in Christ there is no slave or free, Jew or Greek, American or Australian, black or white, gay or straight, blue collar or white collar, poor or rich…. but all are one in Jesus. ]
How did Paul know about America and Australia etc…??? Paul was never an apostle. The present day Christians follow Paul or Jesus Christ??