By Edwin Cooney
In the wake of a clearly aggressive administration forming at Trump Tower in New York City, it’s increasingly frightening for me to fathom why in the world God should bless America. It isn’t that God is anti-Republican or anti-Donald Trump. (May God never be forced to be either!) However, there’s little about either the president-elect or the party he finally appears to be in control of that indicates that he —or they — represent Christianity’s strongest attribute: love for and tolerance of all God’s people. Before going any further, I should note that President Barack Obama, who ended many of his addresses with “may God bless America,” never convinced me of America’s worthiness of God’s special blessing.
The first ten words of the Bible say it best: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” Holy Writ makes no reference, except to the early Jews, as a special people. Yet we know that, again, according to Holy Writ, God subjected His chosen people to periods of punishment for the errors of their ways. So the question remains, at least in my mind, what does it mean for God to bless America?
There is an implication in the very wish that God should bless America above other nations. Thus the question: why would the Creator, the Father of all nations and the ground they rest on and live from, not be equal in God’s sight? Of course, many nations have been created since the Bible was written and these nations have been largely born of the desires of men whose motives have not always conformed to God’s will, or indeed according to any spiritual virtue.
America is naturally a part of a whole, with humankind being the whole! Therefore, shouldn’t we be more concerned about constructively contributing to the well-being of the whole rather than asking for special blessings from the Almighty?
As an American citizen, I want America to be safe and prosperous, to balance tolerance and righteousness in both our domestic and international affairs. However, over the years it seems increasingly to me that our ongoing request that “God bless America” has become more of a command by the politically ambitious than a prayer from the humble citizen. Even more to the point, how do we gauge God’s response to that request or prayer, call it what you may? Let’s examine some recent world developments so that we might grasp God’s role in them:
(1.) The Korean war (1950-1953 ) ended as a truce, not a peace. Did God have a favorite in that “police action?” After all, it cost some 30,000 American lives! To make matters worse, North Korea is now a nuclear power seemingly anxious to try out a missile or two on her southern neighbor and perhaps on our west coast. Thus, Ike’s truce, rather than a peace, has spawned Kim Jong-un as Kim Il-sung’s benefactor.
(2.) The Vietnam War and the “peace with honor” that ended our part in it. Since 1975, Vietnam united has existed quite benignly within the world community. It’s all communist, but it’s hardly the threat we insisted it would be at one time when we sacrificed over 58,000 young Americans.
(3.) The Camp David Accords. On the surface, it would appear that God would more than likely bless Jimmy Carter’s noble quest, but practically every effort on the part of American administrations to expand on it have been met with very limited success.
(4.) The fall of the Soviet Union and America’s triumph over communism seem to have only turned into another set of less than satisfactory conflicts between American and Russian values. Under Putin, a former KBG agent, communism has melded into gangsterism gobbling up, as did Stalin before him, all of its opponents.
(5.) The capture and execution of Osama bin Laden would again seem to be within what we perceive to conform to God’s righteous wrathful justice. The question is, what tangible evidence is there that the Almighty was the least interested in President Obama’s successful venture. Some Americans, myself included, wonder if the practice of stealthily invading another nation’s sovereignty didn’t set a dangerous precedent for future international relations.
All of us, in one way or another, are understandably in search of encouragement or approval. For many of us that means God’s blessing or approval. Abraham Lincoln wasn’t worried as much about whether God was on his side as he was about whether he was on God’s side. If a man of Abraham Lincoln’s stature can be humble enough to wonder if he was acting according to God’s will, shouldn’t 2016 America show some humility and seriously wonder if we’re on God’s side doing things according to God’s will rather than demanding that we have God’s blessing?
A dear friend of mine and a subscriber to these weekly musings, I’ll call him Mr. Kentucky, is a man deeply devoted to God and American Conservatism as he perceives it. I’m sure he’s delighted about the recent election results. Anytime Mr. Kentucky was about to engage in a questionable venture he’d say: “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is permission!” Then he’d often do exactly what he wanted to do anyway.
There is no certain way that any one of us, let alone a whole nation of us, can ask for and receive God’s permission. Thus we seek God’s blessing, the evidence of which invariably we discern long after the request.
I’ve reached the following conclusions which I cordially invite you to challenge:
(1.) Since we do not live in God’s world we must find God’s blessings within our own ability to follow God’s command that we love our neighbor as ourselves.
(2.) Since we do not live in God’s world we will not even begin to grasp who God is or what God is all about until we live within God’s dimension.
(3.) God has granted that man and woman run this world. God has given men and woman the essential talents to create, nurture, understand, and apply concepts on a continuing basis for their growth and benefit. Some of these gifts are as old as humanity while others have emerged with time. Medical and other sciences emanate from God’s original gift to human beings. The world in which every person abides is a physical rather than a spiritual world.
(4.) You and I may legitimately ask God’s blessings for ourselves or people we love so long as we realize that God’s response may disappoint us. We may ask for healing, but death may be the only path to healing until the day that men and women have utilized God’s gifts to create and apply the God-given forces that result in healing.
(5.) If I correctly interpret some recent scripture reading, Jesus’s divinity was challenged by one of the Pharisees on the grounds that the Messiah would be sent to free Israel from the domination of the Roman Empire. Jesus’s response was to remind the Pharisees that they lived in man’s world not God’s and if He were to free Israel from Rome, Israel itself would become as dominant as Rome itself according to man’s understanding of justice. Thus, “render therefore to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”
As we enter what seems to be the world according to Trump, I would sing Irving Berlin’s song a little differently. In fact, I would call it “God Guide America.”
I’m no different than anyone else. I’d like America to be forever safe and prosperous, abiding in peace at home and abroad. However, God will surely require America — as God requires of every other nation — to earnestly administer justice with equity and mercy toward all.
For Mr. Lincoln, the task of reuniting an angry and divided nation was far from easy.
In fact, it was humbling and ultimately cost him his life. Mr. Lincoln himself proved to be a blessing from God not because he sought God’s blessing, but because he ultimately met God’s second command “to love thy neighbor as thy self.”
It’s my contention that whatever may be your faith or state of spiritual doubt, if you expect the world to be a domain of justice and equity, you’ll discover that you’re a blessing from God!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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