JW April 20, 2015 Joel A. Hess

Goodbye America!

Alas, we have parted ways. So goodbye, though I will never stop loving you and wanting you to be with me. I will pray for you. I may even die for you some day.

It has been centuries now that Christians have lived in the West among non-Christians. Our view of the world did not seem much different than yours. We hung out together, sometimes not noticing we were going different places and we had come from different towns. I thought we agreed on the validity of observation, nature, and natural law. These shared beliefs kept us walking on the same path, even holding hands when things got rough. All the while, though, I hadn’t noticed; you clung to the world, but I clung to eternity. You were content to turning to dust or at least not thinking about it. I dreamed of resurrection and think of death often. You think I’m morbid. Meanwhile we drank beer together, watched the sunset, and went to each other’s family birthday parties.

But now we must part. I didn’t understand it some time ago. When Jesus said, “you must hate your life to find it” or “if you want to follow me you must carry your cross”. But now I see. I look like someone who hates his life: life in this world. You might say I hate myself. I’m not actually living for the moment. I don’t desperately cling to the moment, though I enjoy those moments. I think of the future. I have a future, an eternal future. I don’t need to experience everything now. I don’t need to explore my sexuality now, or my greed, or my curiosity. I don’t need to desperately get every experience in now before I am gone forever. I don’t need to just be “me”.

You do. It is all you have. You think you don’t have much time, do you? You look at me like a dog squatted in the yard, stuck doing what he must do, while I’m running around free.

The path you are following is taking you farther away from me. Ha, and I look crazy to you. I get it.

We are all just accidents, you say. Maybe even mistakes. We are just animals. I know, I know. You have been telling me that. I just pretended not to hear you. After all, we agreed on right and wrong and the wonderful taste of an Oberon in the Spring as we sat on my deck enjoying the breeze that promised summer. I so looked forward to the summer together.

But now we must part. You think I’m insane. I know you are lost, spinning in space. We have become strangers to one another. It is so sad. Our disagreements are no longer fun. You think that if you pass a law calling an otter a geranium, then it is. Or if you just have your plastic surgeons attach an apple to an ass, then it is an apple tree.

Your laws and technology don’t actually change anything. I tried to argue my point like we used to do. But I just realized something; you don’t care. I get it! There is nothing to argue about because it doesn’t matter, does it? YOLO. We are all worm meat, aren’t we? That’s what you think, you poor soul. If your friend feels suicidal, why stop him? If that’s what he wants to do, you say. Be yourself. That is the pinnacle of your empire. And you call me heartless.

You think I’m crazy. You think that I hate life. You think, maybe, I’m even obsessed with death. You protest, “Why do you care what people do if they don’t hurt you? How can you tell someone they are wrong? Why do you care?” Like an infant throwing a tantrum you shout, “Try it. Explore it. At best, there are only 50 years left for you on this planet.” You ask me, “Do you hate your body and this life to such a degree that you refuse to explore possible pleasures?” You no longer think I’m funny, do you? I make you feel guilty, and you’ve come to hate it.

You are tired of listening to me. I’m speaking nonsense, aren’t I? It’s not about different views on sex, money, babies, or politics. It’s much deeper than that. We can’t even talk about it anymore. It truly makes me sad. Because I love you. I enjoy your company. I want you to have life, peace, and all that.

So, I must say goodbye. Goodbye democracy. Goodbye Mr. Hume and Smith. Goodbye America.

We were good together. Jesus and Jefferson. But it’s hard to live with you anymore. We have begun to hate one another, though we should have seen this coming. This is how it began, after all. In those coliseums with those lions. Blaming Christians for the fall of the Roman Empire. And now we are being blamed again. We are “in your way” you say. You and your progress.

It’s funny, but the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence literally doesn’t make sense to either of us anymore. It began on a faulty premise that neither of us really believed.

Goodbye America. It was fun, but the experiment is now done. And there is no time for mourning.

20Comments

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1

William Ohlmann on April 20, 2015 at 3:01 pm

All I can say is Amen! God forgive us for we know not what we do.

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2

John J Flanagan on April 20, 2015 at 3:01 pm

Except for those beset by unreasonable idealism, many of us who view our land both spiritually and historically do so in a sober and realistic frame of mind. Of course, America is neither perfect nor an abject failure. Certainly, we have been hypocritical in not reflecting the values we purport to represent. Of a truth, we have our share of scoundrels and miscreants, and I can assure you the whole continent from coast to coast is filled with sinners, all of whom need CHRIST and salvation. Welcome, my brother, to the reality of Adam, to the fruit of the Fall, to the world of Vanity Fair described by John Bunyon in ” The Pilgrim’s Progress.” Do not lose heart by the darkness of this fallen and cursed world, but rather, set about to be a light, a consistent light to all whom God brings into your life, and share the word of God. Just do it.

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  joel allen hess on April 20, 2015 at 3:33 pm
  
  I’m not saying goodbye to the people. I’m saying goodbye to the idea of America, even Western civilization quite frankly. It’s dead
  
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    John J Flanagan on April 20, 2015 at 3:51 pm
    
    History is dynamic, not static. Change is continuous and inevitable. Read the history of the world very carefully, noting all of the ideas which transformed societies, destroyed others, wars, bloodshed, famine, disease, unrest, the church being effected as well. Heresy, apostasy, Gnosticism, the burning of wishes, persecutions, and America, as a nation, as an experiment, a baby compared to the history of Rome, Mesapotamia, Egypt. Western civilization is not dead yet, but indeed the world is doing what it does best….it changes from generation to generation. Just keep your faith. In time, you will pass away, and your worries will depart as well. But in Christ, you have a present and a future.
    
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DORCAS on April 20, 2015 at 3:43 pm

Joel,

Did you get tired at the end of this piece? It’s so thought-provoking and well written for the most part. I feel your sadness because I share it. I, too, love those who are lost and don’t realize the state they are in. But dear brother go ahead and mourn! Don’t turn away from your grief or sadness. Now is the time to mourn the lives lost to deceit, indifference, or rationalism. Mourn for those we love who have no hope. Let them see the depth of your grief. And pray continually for their souls because the time for mourning will come to an end and the Holy Lord will dry your tears; then and only then will the time for mourning be past.

Your sister in Christ, Deanna

Sent from my iPhone

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6

joel allen hess on April 20, 2015 at 3:59 pm

Deanna, it’s just a blog ha. Not a sermon

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7

theoldadam on April 20, 2015 at 6:07 pm

Should we expect anything else?
The downward pull continues.
And “it all works together for good…”

Thanks.

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8

kirkskeptic on April 20, 2015 at 6:46 pm

No, Joel, I love the idea of America, as it makes no sense outside of a Protestant weltanschauung. Those deists and falsely so-called free-thinkers (slaves to carnality) lived their lives on the borrowed capital of Christianity, and are now in a snit because faithful Christians have come to collect on the debt.

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hlewis2962 on April 21, 2015 at 10:23 am

Joel,
I think you should re-title this piece “Hello, America!” Enough delusion about believing in some hegemony between Christianity and American civil religion or American society having ever existed. Where does one begin? With the founders being rationalist products of the Enlightenment? Their deism or Unitarianism? With the Enlightenment trying to dispel superstitions like the Resurrection? With the founders clinging to classical virtue, not scriptural truth? God works through all peoples, in all places, under all man-made systems, at all times. Whatever vestiges we see in God’s law across these boundaries is because we are His creation. No one can say that a document penned by Thomas Jefferson, a non-Christian, was an inspired piece of anything other than apology to assert the rights to stolen crown property, property taken by force if one is objective. The “Creator” was a piece of propaganda to satisfy the masses. Besides, this is the title of an anonymous god. Could be the false god of Islam, or the Mormons, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses – it makes them happy to say it and believe it, too.

It never really made sense to honest Christians, in the first place.

There have been no laws passed impeding our free exercising of religion. Our confession remains intact and we can worship openly. We cannot imagine that public preaching and holding to our values in public will happen without criticism or without animosity. At the least, we will be speaking to others whose religion differs and yet to others who think we want to coerce them through law to do what we want. Strong belief is Original Sin was gone and not even present by the end of the Great Awakening among protestants and the ensuing holiness movement pretty much killed it to take up synergy and perfectionism. American “Christian” dominionism with all of it pharisaic tendencies only operates on actual sin and avoidance of same. But the Constitution still works for us by leaving us to be ugly in the sight of others without interference.

When you see Americans as sinners, just like everyone else in the world, and see that the best offered to you is “free exercise”, you see the truth. People can be Christian, rulers can be Christian, but not nations. Who would rather we be like Rome under the pope or Geneva under Calvin? Your heavenly citizenship calls you to preach and to save. We and the cross ought to be a stumbling block, blocking worldly progress. The Law ought to accuse and the Gospel ought to save.

Instead of lamenting an un-Christian America, be an American Christian with a foot in both kingdoms. Fight for your neighbor’s free exercise of religion in disagreement with you, work and pray for his conversion. Don’t look to secular law to coerce conformity to God’s law, look to turn hearts toward God – render secular law meaningless in any moral sense. See the country for what it is, talk about what it really is, and say “Hello! I have Good News!”

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  kirkskeptic on April 21, 2015 at 10:48 am
  
  @HL: all sounds so wonderfully Lutheran until you remember that the thief bristles at your shoving your religion down his throat when you say “thou shalt not steal.” All law is religious in some way, as it reflects notions of justice; well, God might have something to say about what constitutes justice (hint: it comes before Matthew).
  
  As in our previous discussion, you merely assert America to be a humanist endeavor without supporting your thesis. Please start where you believe the founding fathers obtained their notions of justice, human rights, etc, condsiering that they were raised in a Christian milieu despite being unbelievers themselves. Perhaps the influence of Martin Marprelate, Lex Rex, the Solemn League and Covenant, and other works of Protestant political theory were also indirectly influential. Otherwise you are maligning the country that gives you the right to do so with impunity.
  
  I’m with you about being a good neighbor, but would add that giving him a just milieu is loving him.
  
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    hlewis2962 on April 21, 2015 at 11:38 am
    
    Since we are all born with the law created into us, Christian and non-Christian, alike, it cannot be claimed that things like not stealing are Christian, in origin. Such laws are found in many ancient cultures. From a humanist perspective, such laws exist naturally in a legal, but not moral context. the state, being a legal, not a moral entity, can apply the principles “with a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” as it were.
    
    Gospel is Christian. It is Gospel which distinguishes Christianity from a the simple legalism of human existence and the laws embraced by all false religions that, at best, poorly reflect the Law of God. But nations are not operated according to Gospel, therefore, nations are not Christian.
    
    To reject the sacredness or morality of a nation is not to malign a nation, it is to accept it for what it is. Caesar and the things of Caesar are not sacred. Many works of political and economic theory were produced by nominal Christians (Smith, Hume, Locke) but that does not make those theories and systems Christian any more than it makes a Muslim Christian to believe that stealing is a sin and a crime. All may be influenced by scripture but that does not make the systems and theories scriptural. Keep in mind, all of these men placed reason, not faith, at the center of their experience with scripture and operated against what they perceived as supernaturalism.
    
    Say what you will, think what you will, I can only encourage objective reading – not the slanted tomes of American religionists and New World sectarians. Start with something like The American Religion by Harold Bloom. CPH has a series of essays, The Anonymous God; CTS has The American Mind Meets the Mind of Christ, ed. Robert Kolb. Read root documents for outlook on religion and Christianity – The Jefferson Bible, works of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Franklin, even up through the neo-deism of Abraham Lincoln. He sat in the pews and still formally denied Christianity. these men were driven by the law within themselves but nothing peculiarly Christian. Seeing Christianity in what they did is projection.
    
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    kirkskeptic on April 21, 2015 at 3:53 pm
    
    I am familiar with the men you quote, and of the fact that they didn’t hatch their ideas of individual rights while meditating under the Bhodi Tree; rather, these men had a familiarity with the Bible and Christian thought through the ages. As unbelievers they still had the Law written on their hearts, but some had it clearer than others. I balk at your description of God’s Law, because it is 180 degrees from what God says about it (eg Psalm 119). While it cannot save, its principles for self- and corporate goverment are unsurpassed and unsurpassable by anything proposed by fallen men; it’s like comparing David’s Psalms to Ira Sankey’s hymns, only orders of magnitude worse.
    
    There’s law, and then there’s law; yes, I’d rather live in Calvin’s Geneva than Khomeini’s Iran, although both men had God’s law written on their hearts. I certainly agree with you that a nation can no more be Christian than a car can be a Lutheran, both can be guided by Christian principles. Since the civil magistrate is God’s minister of law rather than Gospel, he must govern IAW Christian principles; ie appeal to he revelaled Law of God rather than some kakamamie contrivance like the pooled ignorance of fallen men (eg sharia, welfare state). Without reference to God’s Law, your concept of justice is mere assertion and personal preference.
    
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    hlewis2962 on April 22, 2015 at 9:40 am
    
    Please be specific as to “assertion” and “personal preference”. Are you implying that not finding Christian and inspired a man-made system that, by dint of human nature, of Original Sin, is a poor imitation of God’s law, is, somehow, a “preference”? ” As unbelievers they still had the Law written on their hearts, but some had it clearer than others.” Original Sin (Total Depravity) operates against what you are saying. It is equally obscured in all, except as the Holy spirit guides a person to confront the Law. Not seeing the equality of systems and calling out sharia or the welfare state (I perceive your libertarian tendencies), you imply that laws are best where they leave us alone, to our freedom. But I would counter that God’s law leaves no one free and discipleship determines the nature of one’s obedience to the law. Therefore, a law which simply leaves one free to choose is not, necessarily, in concert with God’s law. Were the law of a land Christian, it would not permit one to ignore any plight of one’s neighbor but demand that all of one’s abilities and possessions be at the disposal of one’s neighbor even to forsaking oneself. That is the text of Matthew, Sermon on the Mount. The only just system, in Christian terms, is one where our neighbor is fully served. No system has ever accomplished that and no system ever can. Human nature does not permit it.
    
    To live justly, is to live by God’s law. But we do not live justly because we all daily break the law. God’s law is not furthered or established by any system of secular justice. It stands in accusation of all men and all systems for all time. I have always claimed that my neighbor is my concern, not myself. that is God’s law. To that end, I vote, pay taxes, support law enforcement, the volunteer fire dept and rescue, give to food banks. I assist my immediate neighbors in their needs. Does any of this justify me or mitigate any wrongs I have done? No. But I have acted according to law and support justice. It makes me a good citizen, which is a Christina thing to be, but it does not make me a good Christian because I could do the same if I were not Christian.
    
    So, you are familiar with the founders?
    “It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”
    “The Christian religion and Masonry have one and the same common origin: Both are derived from the worship of the Sun. The difference between their origin is, that the Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.”
    “To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.”
    “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. ”
    “God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.”
    
    Yet, they praised Christianity for its practicality in forming moral people, that is people of works. I would recommend a reading of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I. The Natural and Moral Law, 1954-1960. Works cited in this section include:
    Leo XIII, Libertas praestantissimum
    St. Augustine, De Trinitate
    St. Thomas Aquinas, De duobos praeceptis caritatis et decem legis praeceptis
    Cicero, De re Republica III
    St. Augustine, Confessions
    
    Through Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Roman philosophy, natural law is insinuated into the Latin church and bound together with divine law. As the founders of this country extracted from Christianity a moral teaching and tool for building good citizens and they subscribed to the supremacy of reason and natural law in governing human behavior, the foundation of the country lies in classical philosophy through the Roman Catholic church far more so than sola scriptura and sola fidian Protestantism. The appeal to God’s law, as the law of nature, a universal law, is not Christian, in any aspect. The magistrate rules according to the principles of jurisprudence and law derived from a poor understanding of God’s law unguided by Gospel. Where I live, few judges and fewer lawyers are Christian, most are from secular, non-Christian upbringing. It would be a stretch for them to apply Gospel to their rulings.
    
    Sharia law, any ancient code of law, from any part of the world, is, equally, a poor reflection of God’s law. Psalm 119 reads much differently to a Christian than someone who wants a literalist, fundamentalist reading of Mosaic law. We can all agree that God’s law has a place and significance but we would not all think that our divorced and remarried neighbors should be taken out and stoned for adultery to glorify God and extol His law. Calvin’s reign of terror in Geneva had some of that fundamentalist flavor. His was a good model for ISIS.
    
    But Christ does not lend himself to humanity merely as a moral teacher, he is GOD: : “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (CS Lewis, Mere Christianity)
    
    Believing that we can derive a benefit by extracting a moral law and leaving the Son of God behind is about the least Christian notion of goodness and justice.
    
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    kirkskeptic on April 22, 2015 at 1:50 pm
    
    Since God calls his own law just, it is, irrespective of what popes and councils may decree; his justice may be reached only asymptotically, but he judges nations nonetheless. By what standard? His, not natural law, which is but a diluted and polluted theonomy (yes, I used the dirty word…excommunicate me). if God’s law is perfect, how or what do you add to or subract from it to improve upon it? Injustice, like the welfar state, croney capitalism, etc, is hatred for the neighbor you plunder legally (Mr Plunkett, call your office).
    
    Libertarian, yes; libertine, no. I never wrote against government per se, but rather believe it should stick to the mission God gave itn rather than the humanistic mission-creep is has become. After all, “thou shalt not steal” refers both to armed thugs, scam artists,k and control-freak statists who belive in distributing your wealth while sheltering theirs. “Give us this day our daily bread” is addressed to God rather than Caesar, no?
    
    You may have your papal encyclicals, and I’ll stick with Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Frame, and the like; you like papist heretics steeped in their philosophers, while I like Reformed fellow Protestants steeped in Scripture. You definitely are getting the short end of the stick in this bargain.
    
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joel allen hess on April 21, 2015 at 10:48 am

Good points. I’m not in any way lamenting “Christian” America . I’m lamenting “reasonable, logical ” America . But my point is that this really should be no surprise. It’s inevitable, but we can still be sad about it

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  hlewis2962 on April 21, 2015 at 10:53 am
  
  I guess since I never encountered what most people may view as a reasonable or logical America, I have nothing to lament. But I really did like your piece!
  
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    John J Flanagan on April 21, 2015 at 9:15 pm
    
    A ” reasonable or logical America?” Perhaps, you might count your blessings instead of cursing the place where you were born by the grace of God, as in His providence and divine sovereignty He could have created you in another area…..maybe in the slums of Calcutta or in an Eskimo village where you would soon get tired of eating seals and looking out for hungry Polar bears. But all kidding aside, you were birthed in a country where you heard the Gospel. Be a little grateful for what God has done in your life. Bitterness has no place in the life of the believer in Jesus Christ.
    
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    hlewis2962 on April 22, 2015 at 11:12 am
    
    My gratitude is ever for God, for providing all that I have, as it would be even if were and Eskimo. But I was not put here to hear the Gospel any more or less than someone who was born in Nepal or the slums of Calcutta.
    
    I am not bitter but I have no illusions about rationality and logic, either. This is not a nation of overwhelming justice such that the evil are consistently punished and the good rewarded. When my neighbors struggle and I want justice for them, I vote for change because I am dissatisfied with the lack of rationality and logic of the way they are treated.
    
    Should I simply desire Obama to have a third term and stop trying to make things different because America is already as good as it gets, just the way it is? All the laws are just and all the greedy will lose everything and all the generous will prosper? Do I thank God that I am able to do this, here, without a lot of personal risk? Sure. Do I, by extension, hold the US to be godly? No, I do not. Why? Because I know that if I truly push for the justice God desires for all mankind, this nation would be no more friendly to that fight than the most repressive regime and I know that most of society wouldn’t tolerate it. I am well aware that I choose peace and a low level of confrontation. i shortchange my neighbor, even where he prefers the peace, as well. This nation buys silence with a certain amount of contentment. that’s at least part of of Joel is talking about.
    
    “Dear Lord. Thank you for helping me be a complacent American, a happy citizen of the greatest place on Earth. Amen”
    
    Better, now? Who needs tentatio?
    
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Neal Groeling on April 23, 2015 at 12:37 pm

Great conversation! Though I am in the world and not of the world, I still need to deal with the reality of the world and the culture into which God has placed me. “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; No merit of my own I claim but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand.”

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kirkskeptic on April 24, 2015 at 9:21 am

@HL: somehow I don’t think that persecuted Christians share your disturbingly cavalier dismissal of the blessing of being here rather than, say, Mosul, wher you could have been summoned to the town square to retrieve your son’s head. Nobody here is proclaiming the “Christian America” buncombe we all abhor and see for the crap it is, but rather recognizing that God has placed us in the best place humankind has devised because in some wise God’s law has been honored here more than elsewhere.

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The Jagged Word

Goodbye America!

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