Patriotism

Patriotism forces us down a path of moral distortion. Patriots have to build up the good things that their nation has done, and play down the bad things it has done. They have to ignore the bad things their nation has done and magnify the bad things done by others.

For example, American Christians will agree that slaughter of Jews in Nazi death camps for the simple reason that they Jews was evil.

However, the firebombing of Dresden which had almost no military significance with 4,500 tons of explosive and incendiary bombs that killed 30,000 civilians and seriously injured many more simply because they were German was good.

Dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the military authorities had offered to surrender and killing 200,000 civilians just because they were Japanese was good.

Providing logistical support to the Saudi Arabian military forces bombing and blockading Yemen must be good.

This moral dissonance is dangerous.

Patriotism

A common teaching is that nationalism is wrong, because it combines political allegiance with faith, but patriotism is fine.

A Christian leader defined patriotism as "a benign pride in a place", as if this made it cool. However, we need to dig a bit deeper. If patriotism is pride, what is the basis for the pride?

• A Christian could base their patriotic pride on a belief that the scenery in their country is more beautiful than in other. However, as the scenery of a country is mixed, and is God’s creation, not ours, this does not seem to be sufficient basis for patriotism. The beauty of the creation should lead to worship of God, not a nation.

• Patriotism could be pride in the people of the nation, but that does not seem to work as a justification, because the people of nation will be a mixture; some will be good and some bad. Claiming that the people of my nation are better than those of any other nation is a bit arrogant. The most I could claim is that my nation has a higher percentage of good people than others, but I cannot take any credit for that.

• Patriotism could be pride in the businesses of my nation. However, every nation has a massive number of businesses. Some will be good and some will be weak. I might argue that my nation has a higher percentage of good businesses than other nations. Individual businesses can be proud of their achievements, but I am not sure that I can be proud of them, because I am not responsible for what they have achieved.

• Patriotism often turns out to be pride in the achievements of my nation. This is a bit odd. I can be proud of what I have achieved, but not what other people living in my nation have achieved, if I not have contributed to their efforts or helped them.

• Patriotism could be pride in my country’s sports teams. However, that is only true if they actually represent me. The reality is that most sports team are not truly representative (or they would need one player who is useless at sport like me). They actually only represent elite players. They do not represent the entire nation.

• Patriotism is often pride that my nation has a better system of government than other nations. The problem with this is that it is hard to prove that the system of government adopted by my nation is better than of others. Anyway, a system of government that produces a contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, cannot be the best in the world.

  Believing that their nation has the best system of government in the world is fine for people who do not follow Jesus, but it is a problem for those who do. The Kingdom of God is the best system of government in the world, so giving pride of place to another government is disloyalty to Jesus. The best that could be claimed is that a government is close to the Kingdom of God, but I cannot see any government anywhere in the world that has achieved that.

• Patriotism could be based on the idea that my nation’s laws are better than the laws of other nations. However, the best laws possible are God’s laws, so Christians can only celebrate their nation’s laws if they align with God’s laws, but that is not a basis for pride. Laws that align with God’s laws are a basis for glorifying God, not glorifying that nation that has adopted them.

• The basis for patriotism often translates into pride in what the government of my nation has achieved. These achievements are usually successes in fight wars. The most common basis for patriotism is pride in their nation’s military victories, or if it does not have recent victories, pride in the nations armed forces. Pride in military power regardless of whether it has been used for good or evil is foolish. This kind of patriotism is dangerous because it leads to military adventurism.

Jesus spoke incessantly about the Kingdom of God. He called his followers to give their allegiance to his kingdom and its king. He said that we cannot serve to masters.

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other (Matt 6:24).

Loving a nation and the Kingdom of God at the same time is almost impossible.
Paul was a well-born Jew,

of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews (Phil 3:5).

He had plenty of basis for patriotism, but considered his nationality to be worthless.

Everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of the Messiah… I consider them garbage (Phil 3:6,8).

Paul was passionate about the Kingdom of God, so he had no room left for patriotism.

Patriotism is often the thin end of the wedge that leads to nationalism. Extreme nationalism has produced terrible evils, so God’s people need to be careful about going too far down the patriotism path.

Patriotism

Last night I read an article by a theologian comparing patriotism and nationalism. He said that patriotism is good, while nationalism is bad.

Patriotism can be loyalty to any or all of the following, but none are valid for the people of God.

• Land
• People
• History
• Government.

We need to think about each one separately.

• All land belongs to God. He created all land and declared that it is all good. If we raise one piece of land above another, we are dishonouring God’s judgment about it.

• God loves all the people of the world equally, so we must not raise one group of people above another. We cannot say that one group of people is better than another, because we do not them all, and we are not their judge.

  We are required to love the people in the part of the body of Jesus where we belong. We are also required to care for his body in other places. People who are not following Jesus belong to “the world”. They all need to hear the good news. We must not place one group of people of the world above another, because they are all in the same situation (vulnerable to the spiritual powers of evil). We must not be more loyal to some of the people of the world than to others.

• We can only honour the history of a nation, if we forget about all the bad stuff that the nation has done, and only remember the good stuff. The history of all nations is full of ugliness. God is the judge of nations. We do not know enough to judge the history of our nation. If we honour the history of our nation, then we are believing a lie.

• Some Christians want to celebrate their form of government, but we are to be loyal to the Kingdom of God, which is the Government of God. Loyalty to any other government is hostility to God. Confusing a human government with the Kingdom of God is a serious lie.

We must remember what Paul wrote to Timothy.

Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen (1 Tim 1:17).

We must be loyal to the King of Kings and celebrate his glory. Giving glory to anything else is idolatry.

Patriotism or Religious Devotion

When being interviewed by Ben Witherington about his biography of the great German theologian Karl Barth, Mark Galli made an interesting comment about religious experience.

Karl Barth believed that basing theology on feeling inevitably confuses us, as it did liberal theologians at the beginning of World War 1. They were so taken with their feeling of patriotism, they confused it with a divine experience, and found themselves justifying German’s entrance into an unjust war. A theology grounded in experience will sooner or later go astray in significant ways...

Galli explained Barth’s position more clearly.

German liberal theologians could not separate their patriotism from their devotion. Experiential religion is not merely personally dangerous but socially and even nationally dangerous. He believed it was one of the main reasons the German Christians were attracted to Adolf Hitler. They were deeply moved by Hitler’s oratory and ideas, and they equated those with the movement of God. That was, to say the least, a disastrous move at an unprecedented scale.

Christians in the United States are getting really stirred up about kneeling during the national anthem at NFL games. Look from the outside the strength of feeling seems odd.

Civil religion is stronger in America than true faith. I suspect that many Christians are confusing their feelings of patriotism with the presence of God. It seems like patriotism and devotion to God are being confused.

The German example warns how dangerous this confusion can be. I presume that many Americans experience the same feelings of religious devotion at Trump campaign meetings.