King Louis XVI lost his head to
the French Revolution on 21 January 1793, primarily because of the root notion
that he was born great. His over-zealous constituents failed to share
his self-admiration, and constructed a devise that would attempt to sever this very
concept of Divine Right not only from his body (which it did quite handily by
all accounts) but also from every elitist-thinking mind on earth.
As America flirts with disaster
around the world and tries to climb out of the foreign policy tar pit she wandered
into over the past several years, her citizens are faced with the opportunity
and often responsibility to truly defend
their core ideology of freedom for the first time in their lives. Are we really a blight on the world
stage? Was there ever anything special
about the United States? Many American
Christians struggle with how to address these questions. On one hand, they feel they should defend
their patriotism with a resounding ‘yes’ to all of the above. But on the other, they feel the weight of the
shared condition of humanity and have tasted too much of the grace offered by a
loving Messiah to look past their own sin and claim to be anything greater than
the rest of the world. After all, what is
a true Christian except someone who first understands their extreme need for
salvation because of their own depravity?
Is there even space for anyone to
be exceptional in Christian theology? One
of the founding fathers actually addressed this same paradox. Benjamin Franklin alongside Silas Deane wrote
this note while in Paris in 1777 during the height of the American Revolution:[1]
Tyranny is so generally
established in the rest of the world, that the prospect of an asylum in America
for those who love liberty, gives general joy, and our cause is esteemed the
cause of all mankind […] We are fighting for the dignity and happiness of human
nature. Glorious is it for the Americans
to be called by Providence to this post of honor.[2]
There is a difference between being
inherently great and being called to do great things. For the American Christian, God has granted
an immeasurable occasion for being about the business of greatness. To answer one’s calling and to do it well is
never a mark of shame. A good Biblical example
comes in Exodus 31 when God mentions to Moses that he has “called by name
Bezalel” and his fellow craftsman Oholiab to spearhead much of the detail work
on the Tabernacle – the house of worship that would be replaced by the Temple
generations later. The text continues: “And
I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have
commanded you.” God called these men out
of obscurity, equipped them with knowledge, and placed them in the setting for
doing great things.
Sitting in pre-Revolution Paris on
diplomatic business, Franklin certainly understood the complexities of favoring
the American system of freedom over those of other nations. Perhaps he could have gained more political
points with his would-be allies if he had claimed that the French monarchy had
its merits too. But he unashamedly
called America an asylum from the tyranny that plagued the rest of the
world.
This same tyranny still survives across
so much of the world today, and Christians in America must realize that to understand
American Exceptionalism is to understand the concept of calling. They should agree
with Franklin that Americans did not make themselves great, but rather, they
simply answered the call to greatness. I
would urge all American Christians to put aside any sense of entitlement or arrogance
that they may hold on to lest we become a nation waiting in line for our own
cultural guillotine. Instead, they
should unashamedly remind others of those great individuals upon whose
shoulders we stand that answered their own call and answered it well. And they must never forget that excuses do
not work when you are called. For
America to continue to be a great nation, exceptional individuals must continue
to rise up and offer hope of a better future to those walking in darkness both
at home and abroad. Thus American
Exceptionalism is a Providential gift
that should never become past tense in the heart of American Christians.
[1] Silas
Deane was an on-again-off-again supporter of American Independence. He died shortly after returning from a visit
to France only a few years before the Revolution there.
[2] As
quoted in Paul A. Varg’s Foreign Policies
of the Founding Fathers (Michigan State University Press, 1963), page 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment