The Danger of Patriotism

Years ago in my undergraduate studies at St. Mary's University, one of my political science professors taught a year-long class that called for the class to set up a fictional land's government. We had elections for different offices and each class period we were given situations that this fictional nation faced. As a class we had to follow the laws we set up and come to some sort of way forward.

It was my favorite class. 

It was in this class that I was voted as the leader of the opposition party and the debates were often intense. As the opposition leader, I constantly feuded with the the majority ruling party's president. At the end of one intense discussion, our professor pulled the class together for a review of the "legislative activity" and set us up for the next day's events. It was in this review that our professor stated something that has stuck with me to this day. 

Photo by Jared Sluyter on Unsplash

The danger of patriotism is that it does not allow repentance of the sin of the nation it celebrates. 

My professor said this idea was from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and a simple Google search has pointed to Bonhoeffer's Ethics book as the source for this thought.

The greatness of a nation is in its ability to admit where it has gone wrong, how it is perpetuating sin, atoning for acts of injustice and reconciling with its failures. 

When we are unable to admit that our nation has and is participating in sin, then we have fallen prey to the danger of patriotism. 

Getting Distracted in Prayer? Rejoice.

There is a story that I came across some many years ago and for the life of me I cannot locate the source. (If you know where this is from I would love to know!) The gist of the story is:

A student was frustrated that he was getting distracted in his prayer and meditation. He went to the teacher and expressed what he saw to be a problem. The teacher, after seeing the distress in her student said to be thankful for the distractions. She then saw a shock come over her student and she went on to explain, "each distraction is an opportunity to return to the heart of God." 

The distractions in prayer and meditation are going to happen. If we cannot return (repent) to a simple prayer or moment of silence, then we are going to have a difficult time returning (repenting) to God or neighbor when we really screw up. The distractions are an opportunity to practice returning when the stakes are really low. 

Why Repenting is so Difficult (maybe not for the reason we think)

Lent can be identified as the season of repenting. Repenting is the idea of turning around and come back to God. Christians often talk about repentance, but I am not sure that makes us better at it. This might be because we forget the most difficult part of repentance is not turning back to God. The hardest part of repentance is admitting that we were going in the wrong direction to begin with.

When we think our path is so beautiful and perfect, what makes us think we are on the wrong path to begin with? 

Repenting is difficult because we have to be humble enough to admit that the way we see or the actions we do are wrong. We don't like to admit that. We are good at justifying our actions and rationalizing our behavior. We are also very good at seeing how others are going the wrong way and how we think "they" should repent. It is easy to want to walk in the ways of life and love; that is not the difficult part. The hard part is admitting that the ways we think are full of life and love may in fact be totally misguided.