What about nationalism? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
There are a lot of myths I see going around on the interwebs. Some people have this idea that Christians want to set up a theocracy. I could probably count on one hand the number of Christians I know who are interested in that. If a Christians wants to ban abortions or undo the decision to redefine marriage, why that’s just making Christianity the official religion.
Because believing marriage is between a man and a woman which is what everyone else believed up until 5 seconds ago means making going to church on Sunday a law of the land.
So having said that, let’s see what Longman says. At the start, I will agree with him that a large part of our problem in society is that we are individualistic. Individualism is a major problem in our culture today and it gets us more and more focused on ourselves. Our churches are filled with pastors who will talk more about their own lives than they will the life of Jesus. Don’t believe me? See how many times your pastor tells a story about himself in his sermon and how many times he tells you something about the life of Jesus.
There will also be no disagreement with Longman on God calling Abraham to make him a great nation known as Israel and that that nation would bless the other nations. Christians should celebrate the calling of Israel in the past. We should realize the Jews are our ancestors through Abraham, as Paul implies in 1 Cor. 10 when he talks about “our ancestors” passing through the waters of the Red Sea.
We can also agree with Longman that we are indeed citizens of a heavenly country. Still, that does not dispute that we can be earthly citizens as well. Paul himself often used to his benefit when he thought it necessary the fact that he was a Roman citizen. When in Acts he is about to be flogged, the text doesn’t say, “And Paul remembered he was really a citizen of Heaven, so he said nothing about being a Roman citizen which would have prevented the flogging.” He makes an appeal to Caesar later in the book which he could do because he was a Roman citizen.
Something I do disagree with Longman on is that we can love our nation too much. He says it is wrong to want to see America thrive at the expense or neglect of other nations. Longman describes this as dangerous.
First off, on a technical point, Lewis once said you can never love something too much. What you are actually doing is loving what you should love too little. The solution is never to decrease love for the one thing, but increase the love for what is really more important.
Second, Longman gives no examples of what he means by this. While there is no problem with helping others in need, there is a point when what we consider help is not really helping at all. The classic example of this is the little boy who tries to help the butterfly emerge, not realizing he is really killing the butterfly in doing such. For a look at this, see my review of When Helping Hurts. Often, people look at an economic policy and say “We want to really help these people and our hearts are in the right place, so this is the right thing to do.” No. Good intentions do not always lead to good results.
If we do try to help another nation, we should try to help not in the sense of building a relationship of dependence, but in a sense of trying to get the nation to be independent to some extent. Good parents do not raise children to be dependent on them. Good parents try to work themselves out of a job so the children will not need them, because the time will come when the parents aren’t around.
Along those lines, I see many times on X nowadays that some leftists are posting the allegation that Trump and/or Musk want to eliminate Social Security or Medicaid. They then ask “What will happen to all these people who depend on these systems?”! We can debate if the allegations are true or not all day long, but no one seems to stop and say “Isn’t it a problem that we have so many people dependent on the government to survive anyway?”
That should also be an indictment on the church that we are not doing our part to take care of our neighbor.
Next time, we’ll see what Longman has to say about religious liberty.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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