This past Sunday (June 22, 2003) the battle lines had been drawn for my family and me. We attend what is considered one of the most conservative Lutheran Churches, in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS). Our Pastor speaks out regularly against the sins of State sponsored Wars, through a newspaper that he publishes which is separate from our Church and the LCMS.

One week prior to this Sunday my wife told me that the Sunday school was going to have the small children of our Church sing Patriotic songs in support of our Government’s troops in Iraq, because so many of them are being killed. Let me make it perfectly clear, that we as family do not wish the death of one our soldiers, nor do we rejoice in death of the innocents, brought on by our American Government as they seek to reshape the Mid-East in their image.

The songs that were chosen were “God Bless America," and a Lutheran hymn, “God Bless Our Native Land.” God Bless Our Native Land” closes the last stanza with the words “To Thee a – loud we cry, God save the State!”

The Sunday school teacher asked our oldest daughter Elise (8 years old), “Why aren’t you singing these songs, don’t you know the them?” Elise replied, “that she knew the songs, but since our government is invading Iraq, and that it is against the Constitution, she and her two younger sisters would not take part in the singing." Elise and sisters were asked to sit down while the other children rehearsed their lines.

As the worship service began, the small children paraded to front of the Church to sing, ours remained seated with us. No one spoke much with us after the worship service, yet we knew that we had done the right thing, in not participating. Maybe our small act will cause others to think or not to think, of course that depends on when the next St Louis Cardinals baseball game begins. Going against popular opinion is not easy, I told Elise. I also told her how proud I was of her for speaking the truth.

First let me affirm that we as Americans need to be saved from our current Government, and repent of the power we have given it (I was reminded of the scene from Fiddler on the Roof, where the Jewish Elders asked the Rabbi for a blessing for the Czar, he replied “May God Bless the Czar and keep him far from us.”). What troubled me the most about involving the children in singing these songs is that we are demanding God’s blessings on our Nation, as we conquer country after country in the expansion the messianic State, in the name of democracy for all.

The problem with invoking God’s blessings is the fact that as a Nation, we demand that God bless us, while at the same time we pursue numerous injustices in the name of God across the globe. In other words, God bless us as we do what we want to do, but don’t give us your Commandments in how to deal fairly with our neighbors. We need to be asking for God’s forgiveness and guidance as Christians, rather than demanding that He bless our Government’s unholy wars that span the globe, and a military that takes up residence in over one hundred countries.

Gary North said it aptly:

“Just about every national politician has called on God to bless America. If Americans expect His blessing, they had better do it God’s way: by the rule of law (Exodus 12:49). Otherwise, calling on God is a misuse of God’s name. There is a commandment against this.”

In closing to quote the Reverend Robert Lewis Dabney who wrote these words over a hundred years ago, during the time the Federal Government had brutally invaded and conquered the Southern States, is fitting in this current climate of Patriotic fervor:

“And when the rash representatives in our halls of legislation and our newspapers shall have sown the wind, who will reap the whirlwind? When they have scattered the dragon’s teeth, who must meet that horrent crop which they will produce? Not they alone, but you, your sons, and your friends and their sons. So that these misleaders of the people, while you so weakly connive at their indiscretions, may indirectly be preparing the weapon which is to pierce the bosom of fair-haired boy, and summoning the birds of prey, which are to pick out those eyes whose joy is now the light of your happy homes. For your own sakes, for your children’s sake, arise, declare that from this day, no money, no vote, no influence of yours shall go to the maintenance of any other counsels than those of moderation, righteousness and manly forbearance.”

June 25, 2003