Today we have a guest post regarding this article from Russell Moore from a John Doe:
This month the Christians everywhere reel over the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex “marriage.” At the same time, one of the issues hurting many is the excessive celebration performed by President Obama even in the aftermath of this perverted approval of sodomy. This raises the question of what we as Christians ought to think about the American Flag, given the fact that many of us are from the United States.
The flag of my home country will now forever be associated with state approval of tax-exempt orgies, and I’m deeply conflicted about that. The flag represents home for me. I love Christ, church, and family more than America, but that’s about it. Even so, that flag makes me wince—even though I’m the descendant of WWII veterans.
Some would say that the American Flag is simply about heritage, not about sodomy. Many pastors fly the American flag on their property even though they believe that the country is hopelessly irredeemable.
Defenders of the flag would point out that the United States flag has not always been like this. At one point it was, after all, considered the most Christian nation on earth. The difference is, though, that the United States has plummeted into a wicked system of Progressivism (though fortunately late in the game). The United States of America is not simply about limited government and individual liberty; the United States of America is constitutionally committed to the continuation, with protections of law, to a great evil. The moral enormity of the sodomy/baby-killing/divorce/secularism/income-tax-is-theft/let’s-bomb-countries-on-the-other-side-of-the-planet question is one still viscerally felt today, especially by those who grew up in families that were broken by such policies.
The gospel speaks to this. The idea of a human being simply approving of another human being’s degeneracy is abhorrent in a Christian view of morality. That should hardly need to be said these days, though it does, given the modern-day perverted enterprises of gay cocaine orgies all over the world. In the Scriptures, humanity is told to engage in life long monogamous relationships. We are told that it is an abomination for man to lie with man (Lev. 20:13). The current system of progressivism is built off of things the Scriptures condemn as wicked: sodomy (Rom 1:26-27), giving women authority (1 Tim. 2:12), the breaking up of families, and on and on.
In order to prop up this system, a system that benefited the Progressivism of urban SWPLs, American religion has to carefully weave a counter-biblical theology that could justify it (the biblically ridiculous “hate the sin, love the sinner” concept, for instance). In so doing, this form of American folk religion is outside of the global and historic teachings of the Christian church. The reactionaries were right—and they were right not because they were on the right side of history but because they were on the right side of God.
Even beyond that, though, the Flag has taken on yet another contextual meaning in the years since. The American Flag is the emblem of Marxist defiance to Western Civilization, of the elitist opposition to White existence, and of the Zionist terrorism of Israel and the Globalists of our all too recent, all too awful history.
White Christians ought to think about what that flag says to our children, especially considering that most of them will be brainwashed in government run schools. The gospel frees us from scrapping for our “heritage” at the expense of others. As those in Christ, this descendant of American veterans has more in common with a Nigerian Christian than I do with some New York atheist who knows how to signal his liberalism.
None of us is free from a sketchy background, and none of our backgrounds is wholly evil. The blood of Jesus has ransomed us all “from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers” (1 Pet. 1:18), whether your forefathers were Communists, Americans, Vikings, or whatever. We can give gratitude for where we’ve come from, without perpetuating symbols or pretend egalitarianism with others.
The Apostle Paul says that we should not prize our freedom to the point of destroying those for whom Christ died. We should instead “pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Rom. 14:19). The American Flag may mean many things, but with those things it represents defiance against common sense and against natural order. The symbol was used to abort the little brothers and sisters of Jesus, to bomb little kids in Vietnam, Germany, Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Atlanta, to terrorize Eastern Orthodox preachers of the gospel and their families by threatening to vaporize their churches with nuclear weapons.
That sort of symbolism is out of step with the justice of Jesus Christ. The cross and the American flag cannot co-exist without one vaporizing the other. White Christians, let’s listen to our common sense. Let’s care not just about our own history, but also about our future. In Christ, we were slaves in Egypt—and as part of the Body of Christ we are all slaves too in the United States. Let’s watch our hearts, pray for wisdom, work for justice, love our neighbors. Let’s take down that flag.