Citizenship
I know that not all of my readers are American. but today I want to take a moment to discuss a specific trend that I see in the American church and Christian fellowship.
Most Americans are very patriotic, as am I. We are proud of our country, our freedoms, our goverment type, our rights, our military, our economy, etc… I don’t believe there is anything wrong with that. God has blessed us to live in this nation and therefore we should be thankful for that fact through patriotism, loyalty, and dedicaiton. You see this teaching all over in our society. From a very young age we teach our children to stand with hand over heart in respect for our flag and national anthem. We partake in recognizing our nation on several holidays, at sporting events, in classrooms, at graduation ceremonies, in church services, an in civic meetings. I believe these are all respectable acts of devotion to our nation and what is stands for. After all we belong to it. We are citizens of the United States of America, and therefore have a responsibility and privilege to carry that citizenship with honor.
Having said that last night in our men’s discipleship group we compared our citizenship to the United States with our citizenship to the Kingdom of Heaven. We are studying Philippians, in which Paul appealed to the Roman citizenship of the Philippians in order to encourage them in their Kindgom citizenship. As Paul pointed out both our civic and spiritual citizenships are valuable, but our heavenly citizenship is more important. Yes I am proudly a citizen of the United States of America, but more importantly I am a servant of the King. My citizenship to the Kingdom of heaven far exceeds and outweighs my citizenship to America. My Kingdom citizenship is eternal, divinely given, and my life’s purpose.
We all agreed with Paul on this concept in theory, but then we discussed how often our actions and lives don’t reflect this truth. As is tradition in many churches in America, a few weeks ago we took time during one of our services to reflect on the freedom of country and participated in the Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem. The entire congregation respectfully and reverently stood to their feet and let their voices ring out loud. Following that time we launched into our time of worshipping and surrendering to the King of Kings, however during this time of the service the peoples response was not the same. The spirit of respect and reverence declined. Many sat back down, engaged in side conversations, read their bulletins, dug in their purses/pockets, and chose not to participate singing His praises.
I am not God and therefore cannot know for certain the heart of people in our congregation, but I can see their physical actions and response. Our congregations exhibited a much different response to worship our Lord than they did to recognizing our nation. In jewish/Hebrew culture it was believed that our bodies/mind/soul were interconnected, and it was not possible to feel one way and act another. They believed our bodies must exhibit our true feelings and thoughts. If that is true, there is often a vast difference between the way we feel about America and the way we feel about God.
I am not advocating we neglect patriotism, but rather that we raise our worship of God to same level or higher. He is more worthy, but we take that for granted. If anyone dared not stand for the Pledge of Allegiance they would be ridiculed and attacked, however we openly defy the Cross and its Creator without anyone giving it a thought.
Which citizenship do you value more? There may come a day in which you are required to make that choice.
–Wholly Surrender!