America on the 4th: A Country with a Constitution of the People, not a Covenant with God.

“Tell them ‘You are the nation that wouldn’t obey God and that refused all discipline’” (Jeremiah 7).

 This was part of my morning devotions today, the 4th. I did not chose Jeremiah 7 for the 4th. It chose me.

 Read Jeremiah 7 today, America, and weep.

But be downcast and feeling dire not only because of your profligate living in sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, social media, money-making and entertainment while the world burns and floods, but also because you think we need to be establishing rules and regulations, laws and legal judgments to force others to do what you say they should do (while you yourselves don’t do what you say they should do!). Not only because your lives are filled with addictions to substance and consuming but also because you try to create governments with leaders who tell people what to do, how to live right, and how to believe and behave. You try to create theocracy rather than democracy as the governing force and try to establish authoritarian rule where people’s freedoms are destroyed.

The very thing you, America, say that you are doing – being a nation that obeys God – becomes disobedience to God because of how you crush the powerless and the poor in order to feed the ravenous appetite of the powerful and the wealthy.

 Nations don’t obey God. People obey God.

When Jeremiah railed against the “nation” of Israel it was a group of former tribes who had established an agreement (“Covenant”) with God and then later established a monarchy. The people agreed to obey God and they did not obey. They were first not a nation or nation-state with a government, they were a group of people with a covenant. In fact, when they went the way of creating a government, a monarchy with a King and following this King’s rule, the tradition holds, states, that many did not want this to happen because it was blasphemous and that God thought it not the best idea as well.

America is a nation, not a group of people with a covenant with God. America made no covenant with God in 1787 when the Constitution was written and in 1788 when it was ratified. Rather, the people made an agreement to run things by the votes of the people and the rule of law. It’s called democracy. Not theocracy. America is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Muslim Nation or a Jewish Nation or a Hindu Nation or a Buddhist Nation or an Atheist Nation.

 Any political leader today who calls on America to be a Christian nation is not only pandering to people’s values and beliefs to further their own position and power, but they are also undermining the very foundation of America’s strength: democracy.

 Note that I did not go looking for Jeremiah 7 this morning. It was one of my daily Scripture Readings (the others: Psalm 123 (oh my, go read that one!) and First Corinthians 4). But how about that? On this day of celebration of American Independence I get an earful about a “nation” disobeying God.

I am bereft, but not beat down. My faith spurs me to work for democracy, not theocracy. For the people’s rule (even when the people’s choice is wrong-headed and hurtful as some nearly 50% of voters seem to be wanting to and willing to vote for Trump right now! I’m sorry, but Donald Trump, Convicted Felon, is simply a terrible and dangerous choice) and the rule of law, not authoritarian rule and the rule of retribution and avarice.

And, by the way, I’m thinking that if more people in America who like to hold up the Bible and beat people over the head with it actually read it deeply and closely every day, in large chunks and not simply in spaces and places that sound good to them, and then talked with other people about just what it might be prompting us to be and do, we all might just get closer to this thing called “obeying God.” Much like if instead of establishing laws that say we must post the Ten Commandments on the walls of our public school rooms we actually read those Ten Commandments in our homes and actually obeyed them we might be closer to accomplishing what they intend.

It’s not America that needs to obey God, it’s Americans. And if you are an American who chooses not to believe in God or obey God you are just as much an American as one who does. Just don’t usurp or corrupt the vote of the people or break the law. If you do, you go to jail.