Reflection This Week
UNDER GOD?
There is a huge billboard on Collins Road that reads, “One nation
under me. [signed] God.” I don’t know who paid to have that message
placed there. I only wish it were true, all our protestations and
denials to the contrary. Every time we say The Pledge of Allegiance
to the Flag, we utter those words: “one nation under God”. But are
we? Every monetary unit in our currency claims “In God we trust”,
but do we?
As a nation, as a people, as individuals, do we truly trust in God
or simply give lip service to that idea and ideal? As a nation, do
we live as if we are under God’s reign or do we merely utter those
words not truly either knowing or understanding what we are saying?
I wonder.
Those are harsh questions, to be sure. They may even seem
unpatriotic, but they are not. The truth is that it is more
unpatriotic to assert that we believe something we truly do not or
to act in ways contrary to what we assert than it is to be honest
enough to admit that as a nation we truly do not trust God to lead
us and that we certainly do not live as God would have us live. In
fact our lifestyle often gives lie to what we say we believe.
Who we are as a nation, who we are as a people, even who we are as a
church, is often at odds with what we claim about ourselves. We are
as we live. If someone wants to know what we truly believe, all that
person has to do is watch us for a day, put a camera and a
microphone on us for twenty-four hours and watch what we do and
listen to what we say.
Our words and actions, in the long run, tell the truth about us,
individually and corporately. In the short term we can fool someone,
maybe even everyone, even ourselves, but not over the long haul. We
cannot hide from who we are forever, if even for long.
The point is that while we claim much about ourselves, we often do
not demand the same of ourselves, individually or collectively,
especially those who claim, as does that billboard seem to, that we
are a Christian nation. G. K. Chesterton once observed, “The
Christian ideal has not be tried and found wanting. It has been
found difficult and left untried.”
Douglas John Hall, professor emeritus of Christian theology at
McGill University, in commenting on Chesterton’s observation,
observes “Chesterton did not mean that Christianity has never
been ‘tried’ – and indeed wonderfully exemplified by many
individuals and groups.., but he questions whether the civilization
calling itself ‘Christian’ had ever seriously attempted to live the
vision bequeathed us by the New Testament.” (Context, March
2007)
Perhaps I am misunderstanding the point and purpose of that
billboard. It may be simply a reminder that if we claim we are a
nation under God, if we claim that we as a nation put our trust in
God, then we had better examine our consciences and our ways to see
if we are truly living that way. Chesterton and Hall think we are
not, not because we do not desire to but because we have not even
given it a try because we know how difficult it will be to so live.
None of this is to indict us because of our failings and
shortcomings even though it does. Nor is it to argue that we should
remove those words for The Pledge or our currency. Like that
billboard they remind us of what we are called to be and what we can
be if we truly trusted in God and lived as if God’s love and God’s
will ruled our daily lives. WJP
