Paul's Revolution -- Day 2

Let’s face it; my revolution has had a slow start. Most of the time it feels like I am shouting at a hurricane telling it to stop blowing its wind at me. No one hears and no one listens, of course, this is all new to me. Though I am patriotic (I cry when the national anthem plays for a medalist at the Olympics and weep when flag draped coffins come home) I have not been an overtly flag waving American. As the scripture says my citizenship is a heavenly one and I find it difficult to pledge loyalty to two different entities. My wife reminds me that I pledge allegiance to a country under God. That’s the rub isn’t it? Is America a country under God, and if not where does my loyalty begin and end? Jesus acknowledges the reality of living in this world and the need to render to Cesar what belongs to him. Jesus doesn’t want our money He wants something deeper and more costly – our lives. Yet, we don’t live our lives in a vacuum, and unless we are going to take the church community into the remote parts of the world and seclude ourselves from everyone else we do have to function within the greater ‘world’ community.
At the core of the gospel is God’s grace poured out on sinful man through the sacrifice of His son on our behalf. Through faith we appropriate that grace. That grace is then played out as we demonstrate love and care to other people. There is, however, a communal aspect of the gospel that reaches out to those in need, the down trodden, the weak, oppressed, and disenfranchised. We call this social justice. God often disciplined Israel when they neglected their responsibility to those in need.
Because the United States has its roots in a Judeo/Christian ethic there is a strong sense to take care of the socially disinclined. However, as it wanders further from those beginnings how it achieves this end becomes muddled with philosophies that are in conflict with those roots. In the media today (conservative talk radio) you would think that the only reason liberals do anything is to gain or retain power (are conservatives much better?). I hate to be so cynical. I would like to think that their motives are genuine, though misguided. The tension is between conflicting philosophies of the distribution of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Revolutions are marked by what they are for and what they are against. I am for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (within the context of a biblical worldview) and I am against that which limits this pursuit by the imposition of governmental constraints that unduly forces me to conform to a philosophical framework that is antithetical to my core beliefs.
This may call for a Manifesto. I wonder if I have to write that from prison. Revolutionaries seem to end up there.