God Bless America? (Part 2–Fight the Real Enemy)

The most popular post in the history of this blog was Part 8 of the Overcoming the World series, entitled, “The Struggle.” I think the reason that so many people related to this post was simply because we all have the same struggle, that is, remembering that the real enemy is Satan, not the people under his control.

The media has been trying to turn us against each other for years. Social media has driven this divide far deeper.

And the government has only made things worse. The people that side with the political party in power demonize the other side, and vice versa. And the people in power just stoke the anger and hatred instead of trying to put out the fire.

Nevertheless, even the government is not our real enemy, because the government is made of individual people. Peter explained it like this:

Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourselves cozy in it. Don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life in your neighborhood so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they’ll be won over to God’s side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives.

Make the Master proud of you by being good citizens. Respect the authorities, whatever their level; they are God’s emissaries for keeping order. It is God’s will that by doing good, you might cure the ignorance of the fools who think you’re a danger to society. Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules. Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government. (1 Peter 2:11-17 MSG)

So, the message here for Truthseekers is that our mission is not to take America back from the radical left. It’s to start taking the individual members of said radical left back from Satan. Remember the second tenet of the Truthseeker Manifesto:

A Truthseeker makes the most of every opportunity to learn and grow, striving to understand other points of view, with the purpose of establishing common ground.

The problem with our discourse in America now is that nobody seeks the common ground. Nobody even seems to believe that there can be such a thing. “How can I possibly reason with someone so stupid as to think that a fetus is not the same thing as a baby?” “Why do I even have to breathe the same air as these domestic terrorists who are a threat to our democracy?”

But if we all just take a breath and look at the situation as it really is, we will see that no matter how polarized our political points of view, we do have common ground. Our common enemy.

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The Real Enemy

Looking back over the years that I have been posting here, it seems I keep coming back to this theme—Fight the real enemy. This is the rule I cling to when the world gets stupid, and I want to break out my beatin’ stick and go to town.

In Reasonable, our study of Romans 12, we observed that people who persecute us are not our real enemies. The biggest reason that Satan doesn’t want us seeking common ground with our earthly adversaries is because if we find it, then we might start doing crazy things like listening to each other, encouraging each other in our common struggles, even (gasp!) praying for each other!

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So, while our real enemy is trying to divide us all into Us and Them, God is trying to create an Us of every tribe, tongue, and nation. Anyone who responds to the Holy Spirit’s message, and is faithful to obey it, can be one of Us.

This point is absolutely critical, for everyone everywhere, but especially here in America in such a time as this.

Every “Them” is a potential Us. Even though “them” may deny that God even exists, the reality is that “them” were created in His image, the same as Us. This is why God calls us to love our “enemies.” Because “them” are not the real enemy.

At least, until…

The Mark

Then a third angel followed them, shouting, “Anyone who worships the beast and his statue or who accepts his mark on the forehead or on the hand must drink the wine of God’s anger. It has been poured full strength into God’s cup of wrath. And they will be tormented with fire and burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and the Lamb. The smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever, and they will have no relief day or night, for they have worshiped the beast and his statue and have accepted the mark of his name.” (Revelation 14:9-11 NLT)

There is going to come a day when a great many people will make an irrevocable decision to follow the Antichrist. They will signify this decision by having the real enemy’s mark (the 666 thing) stamped on their foreheads or their right hand.

Before this day comes, any “them” is a potential Us. But after this day…
Then, and ONLY then, will these people become a permanent Them. Not until that day will these people become our true enemies. And many Christians believe that we won’t even be around to see that morning.

We have to always remember that the only unforgivable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (see Matthew 12:31). Taking the mark of the beast would qualify.

Voting Democrat? Not so much. Marching in a Pride parade? Nope. How about getting an abortion? Believe it or not, even this is forgivable (not without consequences, but still forgivable) in the eyes of God.

So I will say the same thing I say in every election year. It’s not our job to save America from Them. It may not even be in the stars for God to save America at all. But it is always God’s plan to build His kingdom.

As such, it should be our primary goal as well.

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God Bless America? Part 1: This Land Isn’t Your Land

Your land must not be sold on a permanent basis, because you do not own it; it belongs to God, and you are like foreigners who are allowed to make use of it. (Leviticus 25:23 GNT)

Anybody else as enthusiastic as I am to have the smoldering ruin of 2021 in our rearview mirror?

I’m sure that many of you reading this are kindling a new sense of optimism that 2022 will be the year we clean house and undo the damage that America has sustained. I feel that as well, to a certain extent. Nevertheless, I have a couple of questions scratching at the back door of my brain.

CAN America truly be saved at this point?

SHOULD America (as we have known it) be saved at all?

Now put down your pitchforks and your Boom Bottles; this is all hypothetical. All I am trying to do here is to keep a Truthseeker’s perspective on some very volatile situations.

None of you need to be reimnded, I expect, of how easy it is to get caught up in the emotion of partisan bickering. I have to remind myself daily to be wise about when to engage and when not to in matters political. I frequently make the wrong choice, so no judging or finger-pointing here.

My point is that we like to say, “God bless America,” but why would we really ever think He would do that? After all…

To him, all the nations don’t amount to anything.
He considers them to be worthless.
In fact, they are less than nothing in his sight. (Isaiah 40:17 NIRV)

So why would we think it was ever God’s plan to save America?

Hail Murica.

People > Places

Jesus’ final command to us before He left Earth was (emphasis mine):

Go to the people of all nations and make them my disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to do everything I have told you. I will be with you always, even until the end of the world. (Matthew 28:19-20 CEV)

We see from this that God’s plan is personal, not national. Yes, His original plan was for Israel to be His chosen nation, but the entire Bible is a testimony to how well that worked out.

Jesus commanded us to go to all nations, not to save all nations. Indeed in John’s vision of heaven in Revelation 7, the great multitude was from every nation, tribe, people, and language.

The reality we don’t want to admit is that the United States of America is not a Christian nation. Rather, it is a nation that has Christians in it. God doesn’t bless America; He blesses faith. There is no promise in scripture that any nation will be saved, but that those who are saved will become a nation:

But you are God’s “chosen generation,” his “royal priesthood,” his “holy nation,” his “peculiar people”—all the old titles of God’s people now belong to you. It is for you now to demonstrate the goodness of him who has called you out of darkness into his amazing light. (1 Peter 2:9 PHILLIPS)

So, to reiterate, the goal of an American Truthseeker is not to try to save America, but to save Americans by showing them what the true and better nation is—the Kingdom of God.

We don’t do this through political campaigning or social media bullying or even street-corner preaching.

We do this by simply living out our holy calling. Even if we only do this much, we will stand out in this culture in a way that will attract attention. Not all of this attention will be positive though.

So, when we find ourselves surrounded by detractors, and we will, we must all remember one thing.

(And to find out what that one thing is, come back for Part 2—Fight the Real Enemy.)

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DN=: Part 2–Freedom

“All things are allowed,” you say. But not all things are good. “All things are allowed.” But some things don’t help anyone. (1 Cor 10:23 ERV)

We are big on freedom in this country, aren’t we? We have a Bill of Rights in our constitution guaranteeing us freedom of speech, the press, assembly, religion and petition. When our soldiers go off to war, we are told that they are “fighting for our freedom.”

It’s in all the songs we learn as kids. America is the land of the FREE and the home of the brave. We are proud to be Americans where at least we know we’re FREE. From every mountainside, let FREEDOM ring.

Christians are also fond of the words “free” and “freedom.” We also have phrases that we repeat or sing in songs, such as:

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
If the Son has set you free, you are free indeed.
My chains are gone; I’ve been set free.

Nevertheless, Christians can easily fall into the same trap as the rest of the world in the sense of abusing personal freedom at the expense of the freedom of another.

FREEDOM DN= LICENSE TO DO WHATEVER WE WANT

Within a generation of Jesus’ death, both Paul and Peter were dealing with this problem in the early Church:

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then? Galatians 5:13-15 (MSG)

Make the Master proud of you by being good citizens. Respect the authorities, whatever their level; they are God’s emissaries for keeping order. It is God’s will that by doing good, you might cure the ignorance of the fools who think you’re a danger to society. Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules. Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government. (1 Peter 2: 13-17 MSG)

Do you see the tie there? Freedom = service. Some translations actually use the word “slave.”

Now for Americans, that notion can be jarring. For Americans of African descent in particular, it can feel like a harsh slap in the face. After all that this country and its people have gone through to win freedom, God wants us to be slaves again?

The original Greek word in Peter’s letter is doulos, which does mean slave, but not in the way we Americans think of it. When we hear the word “slave,” we think of forced labor. In other words, a slave’s status is determined by the work the slave does and the conditions under which he is compelled to do it.

A doulos, on the other hand, is also a bondservant, or one permanently bound and subservient to a master; however, their slave status is determined not by their work, but by their relationship to their master.

The implication then, made by both Peter and Paul, is that to be a bondservant of Christ, one must no longer be a slave to sin. After all, as Jesus Himself said, “No one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24a NIV).”

Furthermore, in this context a doulos is a VOLUNTARY bondservant. We are born slaves to sin, but we CHOOSE to be “slaves” for Christ. The only way to be in a position to make that choice is to have first been freed from the grip of sin in our lives. A slave cannot free himself; he can only be freed by the master. And the Master said this:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. (John 13:34 NIV)

And also this:

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. (Matthew 25:40b NIV)

Therefore, serving God and serving other people are actually one and the same. So being a doulos to Christ means being a doulos to the world as well, but to its people, not its philosophies.

As no one can serve two masters, and as it is impossible to serve both Christ and our own sinful desires, so it is also impossible to simultaneously serve the world while doing whatever we want.

This is the reason that no one is justified by their works alone apart from having been freed by the Master, with whom they have a relationship.

Which brings up another DN=.

(Which will be covered in Part 3–Righteousness)