I Love my Country

I love my country.
I do not love the set of values we have come to live by,
but I love my country.

I love my country.
I do not always love what the government or military of my country do,
but I respect those who serve it out of a sense of duty to others,
and I love my country.

I love my country.
It is not God's people more than any other people,
though God's people live within its borders.
I love my country.

I love my country.
I do not expect it to be "Christian" as a nation
for no such thing can or should exist.
God's "holy nation" is the church which exists among every nation
without regard for ethnic, gender, sexual, political or anything else that divides us.
I love my country.

I love my country.
This magnificent act of imaginative courage,
this experiment in freedom, this "secular" paradise,
this I love.

I love my country.
It is doomed to fail, this magnificent experiment, unfulfilled.
For we are not moral people living in an immoral society; rather
we are immoral people corrupting and corrupted by an immoral society
that renders our brave quest quixotic.
But none the less worth trying for that!
I love my country.

I love my country.
I love it enough not to try and force it to be what it never was
and will never be - a "Christian" nation.
I love it enough to hope and work for it to be what it can best be -
a country where people matter more than things and
justice trumps oppression and exploitation (at least much of the time).
I love my country.

My country which I love is not perfect at this, seldom even good at it,
but at our best, we keep trying.
I don't expect my country to "save" anyone,
but I hope that it may be among those nations that
bring their treasures and riches into the New Jerusalem at the end,
not because we are so good but because God is so good!
I love my country.

I love my country.
Though it is, as one has said, the best Babylon the world has yet seen,
it is still a Babylon.
Yet I cannot help but love it and hope that it will at least put up valiant resistance
to its "Babylonian" heart (for that is the best we can truly hope for from it).
Yes, it will be judged by God, as are all Babylons, nevertheless,
I love my country, and always will.

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