tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1771481682224413552.post6270251910555657517..comments2024-03-16T02:12:38.325-07:00Comments on God cannot be contained!: God Bless America?Miller Jones/Lonnie C Hendrixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02865316200703641028noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1771481682224413552.post-982571434185819032022-07-08T09:23:23.184-07:002022-07-08T09:23:23.184-07:00Seth,
As always, I appreciate your perspective. In...Seth,<br />As always, I appreciate your perspective. In times past, sentiment and nostalgia clouded my view of our history. Like many of my fellow travelers on this planet, I tended to look for heroes and villains in the past. With more study and experience, we hopefully become less naive and more mature in our outlook. As a lifelong student of the study of history and my own ancestry, I fully understand and appreciate that we are all a complex mixture of good and bad, nobility and villainy.<br />I did not mean to suggest by anything related in this post that I am ashamed of my heritage as an American - that is certainly NOT the case. However, I do now think that the profound reverence and feelings of patriotism that characterized my past attitude toward the United States and its institutions was unwarranted and misplaced. Events of the last twenty years have convinced me that the United States is still, in the final analysis, one of this world's nations (with all of the negative connotations which that designation implies). Somehow, like many of my brothers and sisters in Christ, I had misplaced the truth that my primary allegiance resides in my citizenship in God's Kingdom.<br />The past suggests that the United States will continue to evolve as a nation and will also inevitably fail someday. Unfortunately, I believe a majority of Christians have confused the political/secular realm with the religious/spiritual realm (and the result has NOT been good for either). In short, the United States should NEVER have been regarded by any Christian (including me) as a "shinning city on a hill" and the "last, best hope of man on earth" - those designations belong to God's Kingdom.Miller Jones/Lonnie C Hendrixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02865316200703641028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1771481682224413552.post-36500132344062492342022-07-08T07:04:19.115-07:002022-07-08T07:04:19.115-07:00I don't share exactly the same sentiment by an...I don't share exactly the same sentiment by any stretch, but I can say; I truly wish we (as a species) could look at the past with a more mature view.<br />Rather than look back and see heros to worship or racists to burn, I wish we would learn to look back and see progress and evaluate it.<br />The value of America for instance lies (at least in my mind) not in the fact that, for instance, slavery once was common (which there had never been a place on earth without) but that the people who once had slaves, eventually freed them.. thats progress. It need not be idolized just the same as ecil need not be idolized. The past and legacy are very useful things despite their content. How man children have grown up and succeded in life despite, or rather, in spite of bad parents? If we could honestly look back and CLAIM our own histories without idolizing the character or burning their effigies we could be so much better informed to BE better.Seth Forrestierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11491809329027539386noreply@blogger.com