Patriotic Comeback

Hm... I've never thought of patriotism as "my country, right or wrong" but more of a fond sense of belonging and sense of duty to a country. There are lots of things that the government of my country does that I don't like, some that shame me... but my "country"? My country is the people, my country is the mountains and the fields and the rivers, and feel love for that country and loyalty to it. Is that temporal? Certainly.

I like your thinking on the avoidance of patriotism... but I disagree with it. You gave a very elegant argument about why to not be patriotic. In the Millenial Kingdom, I don't think we'll need the divisions - but today I think that we do. Why, even God organized the children of Israel into tribes. It's hard for humans to work together without boundaries. The fact that you, personally, have overcome that difficulty is awesome - but I don't think it can be done by most folks. It should be good-natured, and something that's used to help us strive to be better. (I know it's often not, but that's just the evil that is this world).

Should we, as Christians, wish to help our brothers and sisters in Christ without regards for nationality? Yes, of course. We identify first with our membership in a body of believers.

Hm... not sure where I was going with that. :)
At any rate, a good discussion... but shall we to the 95 Theses? Let's go 3 at a time until we're warmed up and can see if 5 at a time is doable, what say?

Hearth

A New 95 Theses

I accidentally came across a website that, to my mind summarizes the problem with Christianity as practised in the US. I would like to know what you think of it, and if you disagree with it, how and on what biblical grounds.

I've mentioned before that a lot of non-Americans have huge problems with American Christianity, which seems to be more American than Christian. It is odd to me when people refer to much of western Europe as post-Christian when in the eyes of many Christians throughout the world, Americans have confused American patriotism with Christianity. Unfortunately, it seems almost impossible to bring up that subject without being called anti-American.

I haven't read through the entire site so I don't know if I agree with everything but the 95 Theses that they present, at first glance, do seem to hit on why American Christianity has fallen into such disrepute in the world, not only among Christians from other nations, but also among non-Christians in America.

The site is called Kingdom Now.

If for some reason, this is offensive to you or you would prefer not to discuss it, I understand, and in that case just ignore this post.

Layla