What I'm thankful for on this Fourth of July

On this Fourth of July, I’m thankful for what makes America unique: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

I’m thankful for the principles they embody, the people who wrote them, and the thirteen original states that bravely set out to be what had never been, a national republic.

I’m thankful to those who have understood these two documents as ideals to live up to and enact.

I’m thankful that my immigrant ancestors and I have been privileged to live in a land whose founding documents allowed them to a live in freedom, a freedom undergirded by mutual commitment and accountability.

I’m thankful for the patriots who have committed blood, brains, and braun to keep America moving, often slowly and arduously, toward the ideal of an indivisible republic with liberty and justice for all. We’re not there, but the commitment to the quest for such a republic is there in our founding documents.

I’m thankful that, despite ourselves, God has graced us with women and men of every nation who, forged together as Americans around our twin founding compacts, have brought our nation and world great good.

I’m thankful for the humble prophets among us who have called us to do better, to be Americans. May their courageous number never be in short supply.

I’m thankful to God for those who have protected America.

I’m thankful to God for America: for what it is and, more importantly, for what it has the potential for becoming if we will embrace the historic call of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

And I refuse to despair when, from time to time, the nation seems bent on yielding to a “survival of the fittest” despotism. I still believe in the American Experiment, a land that seeks to be a place where, paraphrasing Emma Lazarus, whose words appear on the Statue of Liberty, the “poor, [the] huddled masses yearning to breathe free, [the] wretched...the homeless, tempest-tost” from this land and others can be formed into a people known as Americans, a people who seek freedom and opportunity as much as for others as they do for themselves, day in and day out, people of the Declaration and the Constitution.

Happy Fourth of July, friends.

The Peace That Brings Conflict (AUDIO)

This is the message from this past Sunday's worship with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church.

But the first two-and-a-half minutes of this audio presents some thoughts on the Fourth of July from one Christian pastor's perspective.

Also, because of questions raised about our second Bible lesson, from Romans 7, I talk a bit about it before digging into the Gospel lesson, Matthew 10:34-39.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Did the Bible inform the largely non-churchgoing founders?

"Not all of the founders acknowledged the Bible as the revealed Word of God. Nonetheless, it was widely regarded as a receptacle of great wisdom and, especially Jesus' teachings, a handbook for ethical and virtuous conduct."

Read the whole thing.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

'Become America' by The Call

The Call was an American rock band that came to some level of popularity at about the same time as an Irish group called U2. As I've written elsewhere, the bands had a few things in common. While mining different strains of rock music, they both evidenced: a passion for life, a passion for justice, and faith in Christ.

The death at age 60, of Michael Been, the Call's lead singer and main composer, in 2010, brought an end to the band and silenced an important voice.

This song, born partly of faith and partly of patriotism, is a non-ideological, but forceful, call to America to live up to its promise.

It seems appropriate for this Fourth of July weekend.

(Frankly, I paid no attention to the visuals in this fan-created video. The song itself is what's important to me. So, I'm not sure what's in it.)



A blogger, Rick Klau, who like me just now, looked in vain some eleven years ago for the lyrics to Become America, online. So, he presented them on his blog. I post them below, with thanks. Klau's blog was the only place I could find the lyrics.

When will America, become America
When will America, become America
When will the home we love
Mean freedom for everyone
When will America, become America

When will the killing stop
When the last child has dropped
How long must mothers’ tears
Rain down on streets of fear
When will the home we love
Mean justice for everyone
When will America become America

(Chorus)

When will the struggling poor
Walk with their heads held high once more
Children playing on haunted streets
Politicians weave their spell
Promise spoken from the mouth of hell
When will America become America

(Chorus)

With their very lives they gave
Soldiers, the young and brave
Shame for the world to see
A mystery to you and me
Angels will keep their watch
Heaven will count the cost
When will America become America

(Chorus)

But What is Freedom? (More Thoughts Inspired by the Fourth of July)

The sad truth is that, except possibly for the benefit of close family and friends, we human beings value freedom more than just about anything, more even than we value love. We'd a lot rather have our own way than to ever give way. It's part of our fallen human nature, inherited from Adam and Eve and all the other parents in between then and now.

Love, from the standpoint of God and the Bible, is not an emotion. It's a tough commitment to what honors God and helps others. It’s what the apostle Paul was talking about when he told the first century Christians at Philippi: “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

Real freedom resides in being so secure in yourself and your place in God’s kingdom that you don’t need to “look out for number one.” You know that, in Jesus Christ, in His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead, God has already looked out for you and will keep looking out for those who repent and believe in Christ, for all eternity. You have the mind of Christ and are set free, as Christ was while He was on earth, to truly live, whether you're living in a penthouse or the big house, whether you're being commended or being condemned. You have the freedom to become the person of steely love and obedience to God you were made to be.

None of us will experience this freedom in its fullness on this side of death. Personally, I admit that I do, say, and think things every day that have me turning to God to ask for forgiveness and to seek the power to live my daily prayer, “Thy will be done.”

But those who follow Jesus Christ have freedom in ways that no Declaration of Independence and no Constitution, no matter how cherished or important they may be, can ever bring.

True freedom--freedom from sin and death, freedom to live this life without fear--comes to all who trust in Jesus Christ, no matter the governmental system under which they live.  I hope that you're experiencing the freedom that comes from Jesus Christ alone on this Fourth of July weekend.

Thoughts on the Fourth

Monday is the Fourth of July, the day on which we Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Continental Congress in 1776.

The Declaration's second paragraph contains the famous words Thomas Jefferson borrowed and reworked from John Locke and other political philosophers: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Fourth is a great day to remember. But we might do well to celebrate September 17 as much as we do July 4.

In 2004, Congress established September 17 as Constitution Day. It commemorates the day in 1787 when the United States Constitution was signed. But barely a murmur will be heard about that day when it comes.

Maybe that’s because the Constitution deals with things we don’t like to talk about as much as we like to talk about freedom, things like personal responsibility and mutual accountability, things that prevent personal liberty and freedom from becoming what the Bible calls “license.” License is doing anything that may come into our heads—good or bad, right or wrong, helpful or hurtful. It's freedom without checks, balances, or concern for others.

From 1781 to 1789, this country tried to govern itself under the Articles of Confederation with freedom as its only principle. The result was a nation descending into chaos. Under the Articles, the new United States couldn’t defend itself or ensure political or economic opportunity or security for its people. That’s why the Constitution came into being. That's why it was essential.

“We the people of the United States,” the Constitution begins, “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Many historians say that the Constitution completed the American Revolution. Without the responsibility and mutual accountability it imposed on the willing and the unwilling alike, the American experiment of freedom would have failed long ago. I think that’s worth at least a few fireworks.

Freedom in Christ

Eric Waters' outstanding sermon on Christian freedom and the Fourth of July. What Pastor Waters calls God-given rights I would call gifts from God which no human being has the right to deny us. But that's quibbling.

Fourth of July, the Declaration, Rights, Responsibilities

Historian Garry Wills, in his wonderful book on Lincoln at Gettysburg, rightly points out that for the first eighty-nine years of their history, citizens of the United States saw the Constitution, that document which forged the disparate and unruly original states into a single nation, as their birth certificate. Washington and the other Framers saw the Constitution as the document that completed the American Revolution, because liberty without mutual accountability is tyranny and chaos. It was Lincoln at Gettysburg who gave the Declaration of Independence the significance it retains to this day.

Though the Declaration lacks the force of law, its significance for our country and for the history of freedom around the world cannot be underestimated.

As a Christian who strives to pay heed to the Bible, I question the entire concept of "unalienable rights" on which the Declaration is predicated. But I do acknowledge that in the civil realm in which theists and secularists live and govern themselves together, it is a useful fiction, the content of which we can collectively decide. (Certainly, our notion of what constitutes a right and who--which has come to include the unpropertied, blacks, women in the intervening centuries--might stake a claim a right, has expanded over the years.)

For me though, it's personally more useful to think in terms of Jesus' "golden rule": Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I think more of my "unalienable responsibilities" to love my neighbor as I love myself, the second part of Jesus' great commandment, than I do of my rights. (The first part of Jesus' great commandment is to love God with all one's heart.)

Of course, not all voluntarily live by this ethic--even we Christians who, on earth, remain saints as well as sinners. That's why government remains what Martin Luther calls "an emergency measure," necessary until the return of Jesus and the final establishment of His kingdom. Government exists to coerce us into consideration of our neighbor when we fail to offer it voluntarily.

Winston Churchill once observed that democracy is the worst form of government...except for every other form of government. He's right, I think, which is why I feel so blessed to live in the cradle of modern democracy, the United States.

Take some time to listen to the hosts, reporters, and contributors of National Public Radio read again this year, the entire text of the Declaration of Independence, here. May God bless the United States of America and may the United States of America always bless God!

Fourth of July Thoughts from One Lutheran Pastor

[I just composed this announcement for the Sunday bulletin of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, the congregation I serve as pastor. It seems to me that Christians should never want to impose their beliefs on others. But I also believe that Christians can be Christians in society without in any way threatening the freedoms of others.]

A Fourth of July Weekend Message from Pastor Mark

On this July 4th weekend, we thank God for a country in which, among other things, we are guaranteed the right to worship God (or even not to worship God) as we see fit. We can be thankful for America's other "greatest generation" for establishing the United States on two principles, each embodied in the two most important documents of our nation's history. In the Declaration of Independence we find the principle of liberty or freedom. In the Constitution is the principle of mutual accountability and responsibility. The Founders and Framers knew that liberty without responsibility is chaos and that responsibility without liberty is tyranny.

The Lutheran Confessions have always seen governments as necessities in a world that has fallen into sin. Without governments, Martin Luther said, Christians walk through the world like lambs among ravenous wolves.

But, in fact, the Christian is always free through Jesus Christ, no matter what rules, just or unjust, the world may impose on them. We are freed from sin, death, and futility. Knowing that we belong to God for all eternity, we are freed to be fully human beings who love God and love neighbor, even putting others' interests above our own. But, out of love for God and neighbor and in order to preserve that order without which there can be no justice, the Christian seeks to obey just governments and laws.

Lutheran heroes like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed by a Nazi firing squad during World War 2, have shown us that when governments become unjust, as happened in Germany under Hitler, the Christian also has an obligation, out of love for God and neighbor, to stand against tyranny.

On this weekend when we Lutheran Christians express our love for America, we might well embrace a maxim given in the late-1960s by a US admiral, at the height of the Vietnam War: "Not 'My country, wrong or right,' but, 'My country: When right to keep it right; when wrong to make it right."

As Christians, we believe that we can only make America go right when we personally follow Jesus Christ and follow His commands as we participate lovingly and respectfully in a society that, under the wonderful freedom we enjoy in the United States, includes people of many different religious beliefs. For that reason, I hope that your Fourth of July won't only be, "God bless America," but also and more importantly, "America, bless God."

In 2 Chronicles 16:9, we find these words, "For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him.." As followers of Jesus blessed to live in America, may we be true to the God we know in Jesus Christ. As we pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, may we always remember that our highest allegiance is to our God and King, revealed to all the world in Jesus Christ.