The United States of America Is Not a Christian Nation

The United States of America is not a Christian nation.

The above introductory sentence will undoubtedly leave most of the people who read it anxious to loose their outrage, either upon me or along with me.  Some would read it and think thoughts of homosexuality and abortion.  Others will turn their thoughts toward avarice, prejudice, or the government's tepid-at-best enthusiasm for welfare services.  But to be honest, when I write and then re-read my declaration, none of those things really register.  The United States of America is not a Christian nation because Christ would be embarrassed to have the behavior of its individual citizens associated with his name.

What behaviors am I talking about?  For starters, I have no intention of detailing the ordinary daily sins that we all accumulate in our animal struggle to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  While, individually, each is enough to keep any of us out of heaven, Jesus has freely associated with all of them plenty of times.  The lion's share of Jesus's ministry was to Judea's most conspicuous daily sinners.  Nor do I intend to write about the sins of idolatry and disobedience; the Gospel is quite clear that Christ reacts to these with rage, not embarrassment.  America embarrasses Christianity with sins of philosophy.

America has a peculiar sense of justice.  More specifically, America has adopted materialism as an ethical philosophy.  To many, a bisexual adulterer is an unrepentant sinner, unless he's a sitting Senator.  To most, running off with a fat wallet makes you a felon, but robbing millions of a retirement and hurling millions from their homes just makes you Too Big to Fail.  Americans judge a man's behavior by his possessions, not his actions, which is twisted.  Then we tend to assume that our own judgements are backed by divine authority, which is hubris.

Of course, divine authority would most likely tell Americans that we shouldn't be judging at all, but we're just so good at it.  Or at least we convince ourselves that we are.  In fact, where we truly excel is in singling out one or two sins and judging those to the exclusion of most others.  The delusion of being on a holy crusade against the sin of abortion, or of bigotry, or of corporate greed (or, if you're the author of this particular personal essay, the sin of judgement) fills many of us with great pride.  Really, though, we should be serving God humbly, not pridefully.  The best Christian I know preaches virtues individually and sin as a singular, collective whole.  This is his way of striking a balance between loving sinners and hating sin.

Overall, though, we Americans fail miserably at striking a good balance in this area.  The majority of us tend to love the sinners within our circle and hate the sins of those outside of it.  Others are so preoccupied with either loving sinners or hating sin that they neglect to do both.  Almost invariably, we reserve the greatest hatred for a sin or sins of those we don't socialize with.  We hide it beneath a veneer of warning these sinners that they need to repent of that one particular sin--and of course, they do need to repent.  But they don't need to repent one sin as one group of specific sinners; they each need to repent all of their sins as one sinner among the entire human race.

The fact is that no one sin or sinner is especially worthy of hell; the warning that all sin and all sinners would be condemned without salvation is sufficient.  However, most do not find this satisfying.  So, instead of even-handedly warning of all sin, we pick and choose.  Most frequently, the choices we make are motivated by emotion or politics.  A few sins become a constant topic of public discussion.  Others are ignored entirely--not once has a fellow Christian taken the time to warn me about my personal sins of sloth and gluttony, though there is ample physical evidence to prove both.  Instead of trying to bring sinners together to resist all sins, we create conflict and division.

All of this I get, I really do.  I, too, find that loving sinners is hard, not so much because of their sin as because of my own.  I, too, find that some sins just bother me more than others.  Though they may not be the same ones, I have my reasons, as does the rest of America.  However, I am coming to realize that these reasons just aren't good enough.  None of them excuse the fact that I have been loving sinners and hating sin in the wrong ways, in the ways I was taught and I learned by watching others.  When it comes to love, we must stop reserving it for one person or any particular person at all.  More genuine effort and more practice wouldn't do any harm, either.  As for sin, I believe we consider it in the wrong order.  We should hate the sin in ourselves, first and perhaps last, and certainly most of all.  It's not easy, but it's the right thing to do.