By James Wilson
Benjamin Franklin encountered Mrs. Powel following the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. “Well, Doctor, what have we got – a republic or a monarchy?” she asked. “A republic, Madam,” he responded, “if you can keep it.”
Eric Metaxas’ latest, If You Can Keep It, a play on Franklin’s 1787 statement, features a thesis both simple and sweeping. America is a chosen people second only to Israel, a city on a hill, as patriots from John Winthrop to Ronald Reagan adapt the words of the Biblical Isaiah. Metaxas believes all our greatness – from the abolition of slavery to becoming the greatest exporter of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness under God – was achieved in terms of our God-given faith in this destiny. He holds its near implosion began in the 1960s and has just about played itself out to our destruction. I have not yet read the book, but I know Metaxas to be a brilliant and articulate voice as well as an astute cultural observer. I have listened to him discuss it over radio and I look forward to reading it whether or not I agree with him.
I do not agree with him on this one.
We bailed on God-breathed identity and destiny long before the sixties. In the City on a Hill the God-King was worshipped and obeyed without rivals – including our God-given ingenuity. The principal sign was treating all our one-anothers as God treats us. Our Puritan forebears knew and said as much, although they and the rest of us often strayed. The farther we walked the more we tended to interpret gift as entitlement. We enslaved, exiled and executed Native Americans – “civilizing” them just because they were blocking our path. We fought the bloodiest war in our history and freed slaves only to leave them to Jim Crow in the South and a less violent but equally virulent racism in the North.
These conditions were addressed periodically in the Great Awakenings of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Repentance and return to the God who alone creates cities on hills is the only antidote and – to our credit – we do keep awakening and repenting. We have become the most open society on earth and authentic racial harmony has bloomed beginning with the Christian faith-fueled civil rights movements of the fifties and sixties; this despite current efforts to stir race hatred by progressive elements who smell money and power in hate and suspicion.
It is true that our educational and cultural engines have been dominated by the Left since the sixties. It is reality that bashing our nation and the faith in which it was born is the bloodsport of these dominators since that time, and they never let true history distract them. Their blind hatred coupled with frustration over the utter failure of programs such as the War on Poverty – which increased poverty and trainwrecked poor families – has led them to ignore truth. That same spirit that sent men to the moon and dramatically increased human lifespans through medical and agricultural breakthroughs available to all is the Holy Spirit that has brought freedom and peace to untold millions around the world – and challenged them to keep it.
Yet worshipping Manifest Destiny itself – instead of the One calling us to that destiny – led us to promise support for freedom movements worldwide and simultaneously squelch such movements throughout Central and South America from 1900 through the sixties – Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Cuba come to mind. We encouraged rebellion against Soviet domination in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968) and wrung our hands instead of keeping promises while freedom fighters were butchered. The move to replace truth with political correctness began in the sixties but came as a reaction to more than a century of broken promises.
Today we face assault from militant Islam not because of our corruption – which is real and rampant – but due entirely to their blind hatred of anyone not as straight-jacketed as themselves. Our solution remains the same – and as Biblical as the run-up to previous Awakenings. It is to re-focus our attention on the Abba who makes us, His Son who redeems us, and His empowering Holy Spirit. Part of the practical outfall will be to let go of our own hatred and fear that would ban guns on one hand and whole ethnic and religious groups on the other. Another dimension will permit us to profile those who come here to seek promise fulfilled and eliminate the bad apples while embracing the authentic. In that repentance we fulfill God’s most famous dictate – to act justly, love kindness, and walk humbly with Him.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
