David wrote: My responses to this article were: 1. Bush stands accused of being a patriot. What national leader isn’t? 2. His patriotism blinds him to some of his nation’s faults. Yes…so? Many nationalities have jingoistic pride.

Nathan responded:

I can’t see how you can just say “So?” to these issues. Surely the issue here is that patriotism is fundamentally incompatible with Christian faith. It is a form of idolatry; an all-encompassing binding allegiance to something other than God. It is a clear-cut violation of the first commandment.

Patriotism commits a person to serve and prioritise the interests of one section of humanity over those of other sections. It is an opposite stance to that of loving others as you love yourself, or loving others as Christ loved us. Those who are baptised into Christ have renounced all other allegiances and become citizens of the Kingdom of God. We are entitled to love our country and our people, but as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven we are required to love others as fully and actively as we love our own. Our allegiance to Christ as King does not allow us to accord legitimacy to Caesar’s claims to possess the authority to discriminate between the needs and interests of various nations or people groups. To prioritise the interests of the citizens of western democracies over the interests if the Iraqi people, and to regard to the death of an American soldier as the murder of a hero while treating the death of Iraqi children as ‘collateral damage’, is a clear-cut violation of the second of Christ’s great two commandments. And by violating the second, you violate the first.

David wrote:

4. Bush sees his role in world affairs in terms of divine destiny. There are dangers in that, but probably no more than in leaving God out of your worldview altogether.

Nathan:

That sounds to me like a very secularised view. There may be no more social or political danger, but the spiritual danger is incomparible. The non-Christian political leader who leaves God out of their worldview is at least leaving themselves open to being judged by the consequences of their actions and by their fidelity to the things they claim to believe and stand for. The ‘Christian’ political leader who claims a divine mandate for their policies is abdicating responsibility for them in the worst possible way. The second commandment says that “you shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.” To invoke the name of the Lord to legitimate any government policy is a clear-cut violation of this commandment. The technical term for this violation is blasphemy. How can we evangelicals possibly believe that blasphemy is no more dangerous than a secular worldview? A secular worldview is simply an alternative to ours, and probably oblivious to ours. But blasphemy tears the heart out of our worldview. It is the statue of the beast erected in the Temple of our God. How can we not weep and resist?

For all its dreary repetitiveness, Juan Stam’s article at least exhibited a passion for the integrity of the name of the Lord, and a desire to raise the voice of protest when our faith and the God of our faith are blasphemed.