Last updated on May 29, 2016
I’m sure you have seen photos similar to this posted on your Facebook wall, by your social media-linked friends, and elsewhere. Memorial Day is a memorial to the fallen soldiers who died defending America in some capacity. There’s a tendency as Christians to ignore national holidays. In effect, we’re denying that we are citizens of a country because we have a heavenly citizenship. Unfortunately, in practice, we’re aligned with one nation or another, and there’s no escape from that.
This isn’t to absolve a nation of its sins; we all know them by heart, real or perceived. But if we didn’t complain about things, that would mean we were apathetic, that we didn’t care. I’m hoping you care about the state of politics, nationals security or otherwise, because Christians should know what’s happening to their rights and liberties much as any other. They should strive to turn their nation into something better – hence the complaining. As long as that complain links together with real and true action, then it is right. It shows a care and a patriotism that every person does share in some capacity. Even if it’s by virtue of birth, it’s hard not to say you yoke yourself to your home country. And we may also talk about the pacifist, who (by definition) could never become a patriot; all nations go to war and encounter some skirmish, some national crisis that demands an action. Patriotism’s gotten a bad rap over the years, because it puts something in particulars at the expense of the general mass of humanity.
I mean, how can you love one nation and not love the brotherhood of all men, right?
The problem, however, is that you cannot love in the abstract; you do not magically “love” the “idea” of humanity. You love people in particular. In the same way, you do not love “all nations” by virtue of the (seemingly) arbitrary place by which you were born. You love your culture, its weird idiosyncrasies, and its wonderful accomplishments. Because of this, you love it enough and the people you know within it to point out its flaws. The moment it becomes impersonal love is the moment you are no longer human, as Chesterton might say:
Because the modern intellectuals who disapprove of patriotism do not do this, a strange coldness and unreality hangs about their love for men. If you ask them whether they love humanity, they will say, doubtless sincerely, that they do. But if you ask them, touching any of the classes that go to make up humanity, you will find that they hate them all. They hate kings, they hate priests, they hate soldiers, they hate sailors. They distrust men of science, they denounce the middle classes, they despair of working men, but they adore humanity. Only they always speak of humanity as if it were a curious foreign nation. They are dividing themselves more and more from men to exalt the strange race of mankind. They are ceasing to be human in the effort to be humane.
The truth is, of course, that real universality is to be reached rather by convincing ourselves that we are in the best possible relation with our immediate surroundings. The man who loves his own children is much more universal, is much more fully in the general order, than the man who dandles the infant hippopotamus or puts the young crocodile in a perambulator. For in loving his own children he is doing something which is (if I may use the phrase) far more essentially hippopotamic than dandling hippopotami; he is doing as they do. It is the same with patriotism. A man who loves humanity and ignores patriotism is ignoring humanity. The man who loves his country may not happen to pay extravagant verbal compliments to humanity, but he is paying to it the greatest of compliments – imitation.
Everyone appreciates their own culture, and by that can understand the specificity of love. God loves each thing individually in that capacity, and by understanding that love of country as a specific thing we get an appreciation of how God loves us as specific, individual things. I think that’s rather the point of all these circumstances that we find ourselves. It is training, in a way, for something far greater, and at the least gives us an inkling of the way the universe works under the Christian paradigm.
So Christians, I would say to you that celebrating Memorial Day with a cook-out (as everyone’s wont to do) isn’t a bad thing. To be proud of being American, with all of America’s faults, is not a bad thing. God placed you here for a specific reason (just like Paul, somehow, became a Roman citizen for some reason, and you don’t hear him often railing against the Roman government in Romans 13), and your immediate surroundings might provide some previously unknown knowledge and/or ability. Or, as 1 Timothy 2 tell us:
First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, 2 for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,6 who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. 7 For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying) as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
8 Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension.
