American Christian churches’ seemingly general ongoing mixture of worshipping the Lord and the sate/esp. military can make me feel like suffocating. Almost no church members and pastors seem to question about this and see this as idol-worshipping so that it is sinful. Even some of them would see a person like me as unbiblical and would like to expel a person like me. But still they blindly believe they ARE the Christians.

As I wrote in my last post, they seem to be always right.

Because they are right and ‘faithful Christians,’ God is always on their side.
I think this is one of the factors why the world hates America.

I was shocked at yesterday’s service, when I assume so many preachers in the U.S. preached that Christians should respect and honor men and women in the uniform. But what shocked me was more than that. Our pastor repeatedly said in his sermon that the soldiers fought and died for American Christians’ freedom, freedom to read the Bible, freedom to come to church and freedom to spread the Gospel. My jaws almost dropped off. Are all the soldiers Christians? Does/Did the U.S. government order the troops to fight for the Christians’ freedom? It was so disappointing to hear such preaching.

I understand that I should tolerate so many unpleasant, ‘ungrace’-kind of things to hear in this secular world. But what I struggle with is I have to hear something that doesn’t accord to what Jesus wants us to know, be and do from church leaders, relishing with Word of God or even in the name of God.

Somehow many people in this country (maybe in other countries, too) seem to believe in a religion called America. Just like other religions, this religion seems to bear ‘un-grace’ while Christianity reveals grace. Whether those who believe in this are Christians or not, they often seem blindfolded and they do not care about what the rest of the world sees them and still see themselves always righteous. Already being a top-dog, the U.S. may have some more reasons to be unfavored by rest of the world.

Americans do presume a kind of exceptionalism, and indeed we’ve been exceptionally blessed. It’s very tempting for successful people or nations to exercise humility. Instead we develop a kind of entitlement mentality and in some cases arrogance. Good reminder.

Here I am, Sunday morning, I have been awake since 4am. I want to go to church. I don’t want to go to church. I want to go, and worship God without demanding a healing, without reminding Him of the ways He is supposed to behave, without the preacher preaching their ideas and doctrine and theology and being so unaware that it is an icon . They tell me I want the perfect church, I don’t think so. I want to worship with people who know how BIG God is, how small we are. I want a church that introduces people to our living God, one that allows Him to do His work in us; one not afraid to say that sometimes life stinks, it hurts, I hurt, I don’t have the answers but here…here…is God. I want a church that does not try to define Him in 3 points, a church that does not attempt to diminish God to my understanding or elevate me to His level (I am a friend of God…repeat 22 times and call it a worship song), but one that points to Him, and, as C.S.Lewis writes of, encourages me to invite the great iconoclast to work in my live life.
For starters, this is what I want.
It is this God alone that will sustain us and give us joy when we live with poverty and abuse and abundance and everything in between the two and when our child dies and when our spouse experiences flashbacks of war, and when our daily life is pain. Ask me how I know. It is this God, the big one, the Creator and Redeemer I seek, and know that even then, my understanding is an icon!
OK, soapbox over, I step down! Thanks for being a pointer to Him, your writing is a hand to hold along the way.

Quite bluntly, I have to fight resentment and even hate feelings **gasp** frequently at the Christianity being promoted in our country. I love my country, I love the Lord, but I have to tell you I am about fed up with walking in churches with my walker (which I am so blessed to be able to run into a discount store and purchase and have mobility!) and being looked at as though it is a symbol of sin in my life, as happened as little as 2 weeks ago. The preacher stood there and said God wants to heal everyone and if He is not healing you it is because of something standing in the way, that in his experience, people who are not healed are grumblers and complainers who need to get over it so God will step in and heal. It was a long walk to the exit. I felt the weight of the eyes of judgement and speculation added to the weight of my body!
He also went on to proclaim that God wants everyone to be rich, prosperous and blessed financially so we can go out and bless others. He stated he is not a prosperity preacher, he is a truth preacher.

Why does every denomination and most preachers seem to think that they have the REAL understanding of the Bible? If you disagree with me, you disagree with God and His Word? It is not just my God that I want you to know, it is not just Jesus Christ, and Him crucified that I am sharing, it is my understanding and I understand everything and what I understand is the truth and if you don’t agree with me you don’t agree with God and His Word.

What is the response when this teaching goes to China, and Peru and all over the world as is the plan of this man (please understand, this is my latest encounter, not my only, with this teaching.) and his wife? Is this really the message we are to bring around the world? Are we really supposed to be preaching our culture and thoughts and values to people who have need of a Christ we can cling to even when (especially when) there is no healing and prosperity and relief of pain or even a drug store to walk in and buy a new set of wheels?
So now I can move on to another church, maybe the one with the split between the pastor and the assistant pastor..oh, now I have two choices..and the same split divided families because only sinners went with the pastor according to the asst. pastor, and only visa versa. Because, of course, each on had THE TRUTH. I could go on, I won’t.

I agree with you that we are NOT supposed to have all the answers. No one has all the truth. We live in a world full of broken and fallen pieces and the question is not as much “why”, as what will I do with it? Telling the world that their poverty and sickness and lack of wealth and healing is a sign of their sinfulness is a great way to spread hate, don’t you think?

Linda, I think this is a great place for your comments, because now more people can read them, as compared to a private letter. I agree with you completely, and have a file drawer full of letters from people who have experienced something of the rejection and pain you have felt because of insensitive and wrong-headed Christians. The damage is especially pernicious in the developing world. In those countries people flood in the front door believing they’ve found a magic solution to poverty, injustice, and suffering. They leave with heads down out the back door, betrayed not by the Gospel (consider Jesus and Paul and their difficult lives) but by the misguided American overlay. Preach it, sister. I apologize to you on behalf of the church that hurt you.
Philip

These ideals are, of course, good—but they are so easily twisted into something that isn’t good at all. Whilst the freedom that America seems to embody is in many ways tantalising, I respectfully suggest that it is a distorted version of the original. It isn’t the kind of freedom symbolised by the garden within which Adam and Eve were free to roam; that freedom was to be enjoyed in the context of God’s welcome company and providential care. Rather, it appears to be a counterfeit freedom focused on self as a substitute for God—a freedom represented by the forbidden fruit of which Adam and Eve took lustful bites to their (and our) harm.

The Bible teaches that real freedom is freedom from self to love God and neighbour, not freedom for self to the exclusion of God and neighbour. It seems to me that Life, Liberty and Happiness are not to be pursued as ends in themselves. No, God is to be the focal point of our pursuit—and life, liberty and happiness are to be received gratefully as by-products of that pursuit. America’s founding ideals have this wrong. Though they are derived from God, they effectively oust God in the name of a false, godlike Self whose chief end is Life, Liberty and Happiness. God is invited along for the ride—“God bless America!”—but only as the enabler of America’s quest for a fully actualized, even divine, Self.

One of the results of this elevated self-view is, frankly, arrogance on the international stage. There is much to like about America, but its deep-seated belief that it is, in President Obama’s words, “the last, best hope on earth,” probably isn’t among its most likeable characteristics. Too many Americans have a swagger about them. Americans are known the world over as “loud.” Hand-on-heart pride in one’s country is fine, but chest-thumping, condescending egotism is just plain unattractive—and ungodly. Maybe this super-confidence has something to do with why people who hate America do so with such conviction? I hasten to add, I’m not one of them.

I think God yearns to bless America, but is America willing to lay down its quest for an aggrandized Self, clothe itself in humility and start pursuing God as an end in himself? Life, liberty and happiness are abundantly available in God, the only true Source of freedom in the universe.

That the Old Testament condemns homosexual acts is well known. Why it does so is a mystery. Various suggestions have been put forward. Driver and Miles[1] for example held that it was a development parallel to that in Mesopotamian law. The older Laws of Hammurapi do not mention the offence, whereas the Middle Assyrian laws condemn it. They suggested that a similar development occurred in Hebrew law. The earlier laws do not discuss homosexuality, while the latest (P) texts demand the death sentence for it (Lev 18:22, 20:13). Similarly Coleman[2] tries to derive the biblical attitude from the attitude of other nations, specifically the Egyptians. Indeed he suggests there was a common Semitic consensus opposing homosexual practice.

Now it cannot be ruled out a priori that the Old Testament shared its neighbours’ attitudes to homosexuality. There does seem to have been a large measure of agreement in the ancient world as far as heterosexuality was concerned. Marriage law and

[p.360]

customs, for example, the repudiation of pre-marital intercourse and adultery, the acceptance of polygamy and divorce, seem to be much the same throughout all those Near Eastern cultures for which evidence is available.[3] The most obvious difference between Israel and its neighbours as far as heterosexual morality is concerned lies in the area of incest. Here the Old Testament rules,[4] forbidding union with consanguines and affines of the first and second-degree, go much farther than their neighbours, who sometimes even countenanced unions of consanguines of the first degree, e.g. brother and sister. So it could be that in repudiating homosexual practice the Old Testament is simply adopting the attitudes of surrounding nations.

However the evidence at present available suggests that this is not the case. The Old Testament rejection of all kinds of homosexual practice is apparently unique in the ancient world. Most of the ancient Near East adopted an attitude to ….. [excess content removed]

However, on a political level the U.S. is quite unpopular in Latin America. There are many reasons for this (e.g., trade imbalances, U.S. military presence, or pollution from American companies’ irresponsible oil drilling practices, to name but three) but there is also the politically useful truth that there is nothing that can unite a fractured society or group of countries like a common enemy.

Americans used to roll their eyes at Hugo Chávez, for example, when he tried to blame the U.S. for the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 and accused the U.S. of wanting to invade and militarily occupy Haiti, or when he hinted in 2011 that the U.S. gives cancer to South American leaders (like himself), or even that first capitalism, then imperialism, had arrived and dried up water on the planet Mars, but those comments (and others) were intended to be politically useful.

In a less ridiculous fashion (but with great Latin fervor), Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa has referred to the U.S. as Imperialist Yankees and has repeatedly taken the opportunity to criticize the U.S. to the press. From a political standpoint, such South American leaders find the U.S. government to be a very convenient scapegoat, for again, a common enemy to blame for one’s ills is an effective political tool for uniting people.

Historically, it strikes me that every country around the globe, both now and down throughout history, has always had the goal of working towards self-interest. That is simply human nature. So if that means that one nation takes advantage of another, so be it. If the tables of fortune were turned, and the underdog became the top dog, the new top dog would take advantage of the old one. That’s how things go.

Thus the British historian quoted is quite right that the top dog is always hated – it goes with the territory.

When the top dog is knocked off by another, the new top dog becomes the target of envy and hatred. After all, do old former top dogs like Rome, Egypt, Greece or the Ottomans still inspire the same hatred and envy today that they must have inspired when in their prime so many moons ago? Look at what happened a half millennia ago in what is now Mexico: the Aztecs were widely hated by their subjugated neighbors, but when the Spanish conquistadors destroyed the Aztec empire (with the help of many who were only too happy to dethrone the Aztecs), the conquistadors became the new bad guys.

When the day comes that the U.S. is no longer the top dog or perhaps not even in the top group (and it will happen, if history is any guide to the fate of nations), I suspect that politically the U.S. will cease to be such a political whipping boy in many countries.

BTW, I enjoyed not just the fine article but reading the informed comments by others living abroad in response to it…

“We love death. The US loves life. That is the difference between us two.”