Tag: Kurt Willems

3 things I’m thankful for this Fourth of July

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I’ve shared before about my ambivalence toward the commingling of Christianity and nationalism that takes place every Fourth of July. I have deep reservations with how we invoke God’s name to glorify our revolutionary past.

I can think of several reasons for ambivalence. For example, Kurt Willems has pointed out that the Revolutionary War did not meet the criteria for a “just war” as defined by Christian thinkers from Augustine to Aquinas. Carson T. Clark has observed that the war we commemorate each Fourth of July  pitted Christians against other Christians. Instead of gathering around a common table to receive Christ’s sacrifice, Christians sacrificed one another—in clear violation of Jesus’ teaching. (You can’t very well love someone while you’re trying to kill them.)

I could write at length about the idolatry of nationalism. I could deconstruct the blind spots of churches that hold patriotic (and often overtly partisan) worship services. But the truth is, I have blind spots of my own. So this year for the Fourth of July, I thought I’d do something different. I want to share a few things about America for which I’m truly thankful. These don’t lessen my reluctance to celebrate our presumed national supremacy. But sometimes the best thing is to pause for a bit and appreciate what is good.

So here are three things I’m thankful for this Fourth of July…

1. That our government was built on a commitment to freely relinquish power.

I think this may be one of the greatest legacies of the Founding Fathers. After his triumph over Lord Cornwallis, George Washington did something, well, unusual. He resigned his commission as commander-in-chief. Legend has it that he was offered the chance to become America’s king—a legend which may or may not be true. Either way, Washington walked away at the precise moment when he could have consolidated and exploited his own power.

Years later, Washington chose not to run for a third term as president. His reasons may have been more personal than political—he was tired and yearning for retirement. But once more he set the remarkable precedent of voluntarily walking away from power, rather than clutching it until the blood ran cold in his fingers.

It’s not quite as dramatic as Bilbo dropping the ring of power in The Fellowship of the Ring, but it’s pretty much the same idea. Power corrupts. The longer we hold on to it, the more it corrupts us. Washington showed another way to exercise power—with restraint.

2. That our ancestors envisioned a society where we can disagree without killing each other—most of the time.

The White House has changed hands between rival political parties 24 times since Washington left office. Only once did that change lead to revolt. The idea that someone can transfer power to their political rival without bloodshed was remarkable 230 years ago. And while it’s thankfully not as unusual today, it’s still something we shouldn’t take for granted.

The effect of polarization today is to draw us into increasingly hostile forms of conflict with each other. When you start viewing those you disagree with politically as threats to society, you are, in effect, giving up on the American political experiment.  

3. That God loves America as much as he loves every other nation.

God loves America. But we should never lose sight of the trajectory of the biblical drama. It moves from “one nation” to “all nations.” Even when it was still “one nation,” their job was to bless the other nations (Genesis 12).

There is no such thing as “American exceptionalism” in God’s eyes. America is not a new Israel. There is nothing in scripture to even remotely suggest that we are “special” in the way that Israel was in the biblical drama. To say  that we are is to move in the opposite direction that God is going.

God’s kingdom transcends and encompasses every nation. America doesn’t matter to God any more than Eritrea. But it also means that we don’t matter to him any less. God cares deeply for the people of this nation—and that’s something to be grateful for this Fourth of July.

Photo by Jeff Kubina on Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0

Corporate election

I spent several posts (starting here) describing my journey in and out of Calvinism — specifically, the neo-Reformed version. I left because I came to believe two things about the Bible and predestination. One, the Bible doesn’t set out to give a comprehensive understanding of predestination, what it is, or how it works. (There are lots of things we try to make the Bible say that it simply has no interest in saying.)

Two, to the degree the Bible does speak about predestination, it paints a very different picture.

And while we’re doing things in pairs… the Bible (as I understand it) differs from Calvinism on predestination in two key ways, both of which I alluded to in an earlier post:

  1. Calvinism views predestination as primarily an individual affair, by which God preemptively hand-picked certain people for salvation.
  2. Calvinism see predestination as both the means and the end, rather than as a means by which God makes it possible for any and all to come to him.

Both problems can be resolved by something known as the “corporate view of election.”

Just what is corporate election? Well, not the best name ever, for starters. Especially in the wake of the now infamous Citizens United case.

Basically, the corporate view of election says that God predestined there would be a redeemed community called the church, but he did not determine in advance the individual composition of that group.

This view stands in contrast to both to the traditional Calvinist perspective (that God predestined individuals) AND the traditional Arminian view (that God saw in advance who would choose him and predestined them on the basis of his foreknowledge — though some Arminians accept the corporate view instead).

The video below is a helpful intro to the corporate view of election, courtesy of Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd, pastors at Woodland Hills Church in Minnesota. They say basically everything I have to say about the corporate view, only better and more succinctly. But I’ll still give it a shot.


(Thanks to Kurt Willems for highlighting this video on his blog last year.)

Making our trash someone else’s problem

Kurt Willems has an interesting post about the Seattle City Council’s decision to ban single-use plastic bags.

In 2008, Seattle tried to impose a fee on plastic shopping bags, but voters overturned it after a petition drive funded by the plastics industry.

Kurt thinks the ban is a good idea, and I agree. But some of my libertarian friends raise an important point: they say while it’s good for individuals to make eco-friendly choices, governments have no business legislating something just because it happens to be a good idea.

Is this a cop-out? A feeble excuse from those with no real intention of making eco-friendly choices?

Not necessarily. One friend who made this very argument also puts his kids in cloth diapers. He uses reusable garbage bags. (I don’t even do that.) He’s walking the talk, as they say.

I happen to be skeptical of big government, without necessarily being anti-government. (I think government has a legitimate responsibility to regulate, within reason, a wide range of things.)

But I’m equally skeptical of big business, without being anti-business. The market plays a vital role in creating economic opportunity for billions. But what happens when a business becomes larger than some countries? Wal-Mart, for example, would be the world’s 25th largest economy if it were a country. Who holds them accountable? Individual consumers? Not likely.

Back to the point: should governments be deciding whether or not we can use disposable shopping bags? Has the Seattle City Council overstepped its bounds? Should environmental responsibility be a personal choice rather than a mandate?

The “personal choice” argument might work if no one else is affected by your behavior. In other words, if you’re the only one impacted by your decision to use a disposable shopping bag, then fine. You should be able to carry on, free from government interference.

But what if you’re not the only person affected by your behavior? Does government have a responsibility to intervene when your choices negatively impact others?

Consider that it takes around 500 years for a plastic bag to decompose. As I understand it, even biodegradable bags take a long time to break down, because decomposition requires air, and there’s not much of that to be found inside a heavily compacted landfill. (Thanks to Dan Martin for providing sharing this insight.)

Something from which we derive a few minutes’ use will spend centuries in a landfill.

So here’s my question. Do we have the moral right to make our trash someone else’s problem? We derive all the benefit; our children and grandchildren get to deal with our mess.

“It’s just a plastic bag,” someone might say. Except that it’s 500 billion plastic bags every year. One million every minute. And almost 90% of them wind up in landfills, where they will continue to be someone else’s problem, long after we’re gone.

Do we have that right?

Do Christians, for whom the second greatest commandment is “love your neighbor,” have that right?

Might our “neighbors” include those who inherit the earth after us?

And do governments have a moral obligation to protect others from the negative consequences of our bad behavior?

Some politicians in the US follow this line of reasoning when they protest the growing federal debt. They say it’s not right for us to spend money we don’t have and leave the bill for our kids and grandkids.

They have a point. But perhaps the same logic applies to the debate over plastic bags, nuclear energy, and other environmental issues.