Alan Keyes
August 29, 2004
Birmingham, Alabama

DR. BILL ELDER: When we invited Dr. Keyes to speak to us, we had no idea that he would be, at this moment, the Republican nominee in the Senate race in Illinois. We are very grateful that he decided to sustain the engagement and to be here today.

We have invited Dr. Keyes to both worship with us and speak to us today because of his example in the field of Christian citizenship. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights, along with the history surrounding those formative, normative documents, guarantee religious freedom. Our Founders realized how crucial it would be to the health of our nation to have a free church with a strong prophetic voice speaking out, standing tall, and appropriately engaging and leading our nation. They knew that without that voice of conscience and principle, we could easily lose our way and fail to fulfill our destiny.

Alexis de'Tocqueville insightfully said that should America cease to be good, she would cease to be great. For too long now, Christians have sidelined and silenced themselves from this God-given and constitutionally-protected role.

Dr. Keyes has not been silent or sidelined. He has not hesitated to speak out and stand tall for the cause of public righteousness, the vision for which has certainly derived in major part from his own Christian faith. We have asked Ambassador Keyes to speak to us on our Christian citizenship Sunday about the subject Christian citizenship.

Will you join with me now in welcoming Alan Keyes.

ALAN KEYES: Thank you. Praise God. Good morning.

Now, obviously we'll be talking to you a little bit today about where we stand in that moral crisis that as a nation we face, and which I believe permeates just about every major challenge that we confront as a people in this country.

Indeed, I think there is nowhere you can look on the landscape where you do not find problems that are rooted in the degradation of our moral culture, the hardness of our moral conscience, the hardening of our hearts, the surrender of moral beliefs, the abdication of moral responsibility. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about domestic issues, economic issues, issues of national security and foreign policy. Everywhere we look, this is true.

I would have to tell you that I think in facing that range of challenges, and in all the difficulties that we do have when we confront them, there's not a single area where we now face problems--including the assault on marriage and other things that are, I think, fundamentally threatening not just our liberty, not just our institutions, but our civilization and our whole way of life. There's not one of them in which I do not think we have acknowledged this truth, that the main reason we are facing these problems is because believers, people of Christian faith, have not been acting as if they are people of Christian faith when they face the choices of their citizen vocation.

I don't believe that there's a single one of these things--from the problems of poverty and economic life, all the way over to the problems of the challenge of violence in our streets, and drugs, and family life, all the way to the challenges of our national security--that would be what they are today, if the church in this country was acting like the church. And that's a sad truth.

But I want to be clear, though. I am not one of those folks--and I know that sometimes this will be done, and I think it has its place--[who will] look and we'll say, "Well, this must be because," what? Because we're a bad people?

I don't think so, necessarily. I think that in fact we have a lot of good people of faith in this country. I see them and work with them all the time, people who are carrying the transformation of life that Christ represents into their vocation as parents and the family life, into their vocation as teachers, into their work, not only within the church, but in their workplace and in their schools. I think a lot of that is happening.

And yet, we are confronted by a truth that people who will carry their Christian faith into all these different walks of life have been led to believe that when they get to the voting booth, when they get to the legislature, when they're sitting on the bench, they have to leave Jesus at the door.

"Check Jesus at the door! Leave Him out there in the cold! Can't bring him in here!"--and that's because we have accepted an understanding of our situation and our lives that puts our respect for law into conflict with our respect for Almighty God.

That's what I want to talk about here today. But being as how we have gathered together in the name of our Lord and for the purpose of worshiping God, and we know that one of the best things we can do, if we really want to give God proper respect and worship, is to show reverence for His word. I think we ought to start today by looking for some guidance in His word.

The wonder of it is that Christ actually explicitly addressed this very question. We're here to talk about the relationship between faith and citizenship, between government and politics and our faith, and this is one of those areas where Jesus was very clear, very explicit, He is on the record on this very question. That's not always the case. Sometimes we have to imply, we have to deduce, but on this one we've got it. And you remember the famous passage, it's, I think, something we've heard many times indeed, in the course of our lives. If we go to Matthew chapter 22, verse 16:

And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?

Sound like a pretty straightforward question, doesn't it? Seems kind of simple. These guys are just wanting to know, "Oh! Jesus, you're such a good guy, and you wouldn't give us an answer that was prejudiced by any special interests! So, you would tell us, should we give tax to Caesar or not? That's just a simple, innocuous question."

Now, Christ, of course, understood otherwise. We've probably been through that many times in our church. He understood otherwise, and He immediately saw that they were actually asking Him a really dangerous, indeed, a wicked question. It says here:

But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?

Why would He say that? He says it because He knew that the question was meant to put Him on the horns of a dilemma, as they say, because on the one side, if He says that it's lawful to give taxes to Caesar, in ancient Roman times, there was a temple to Caesar in Rome. Caesar was worshipped as a god, and when you paid tribute to Caesar, you were in fact making an offering to a false god, to an idol.

And the people who were asking Him this question knew that. They knew that, "Wait a minute; if He says that you should give taxes, see, then we'll have Him, because that contradicts Jewish law where we should only worship God, and we shouldn't be giving offerings to idols." On the other hand, if He said it's not lawful to give taxes to Caesar because the Jewish law says you cannot give tribute to false idols, then they would run off to Herod and say, "Here is this seditious rebel preaching against Rome. String Him up!"

However He answered, they thought He was caught--and that's why Jesus saw through what they were doing, of course. And then, at this point, Christ does something that's a little bit unusual. Now, I'm not saying it's unusual in our worldly way; it's not unusual at all. We remember that movie Jerry McGuire, where the guy was constantly saying, "Show me the money!" Remember that one? So, in our human terms, it's quite frequent that before we'll move, you'd better show me that dollar.

Now, on the other hand, this is kind of unusual for Christ. I don't really think of Jesus as someone who looks for the money first. Now, admittedly, there are some folks, you go to their church, and they'll take the offering before the sermon.

[congregation laughs]

But that's because they don't have the confidence that Pastor Elder has.

But you and I both know that Christ, generally speaking, not only didn't ask for the money before the sermon, He generally didn't ask for it after the sermon. He was more likely to be giving you loaves and fishes than taking money from you.

So, in a way, this is an unusual, unChrist-like thing to do: "Show me the money!" But He does it. They brought unto him a penny, it says, and He then says:

Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. When they had heard these words, they marveled, and left him, and went their way.

This passage has given me a lot of trouble over the years. I mean, they marveled, and you think at first in a superficial kind of way that maybe they were marveling at how clever Christ was, because here He was in a fashion that, unfortunately, we would find altogether too familiar these days, I think.

There was an ancient god in Rome, he was called Janus. He was the god of boundaries, as I recall, and that's because he had these two faces. One looked this way, one looked that way, and when you set him on the boundary, he kind of symbolized the fact the he had looked all around and marked the boundary. That would be a perfect symbol for a lot of our politicians, don't you think? Talking out of both sides of their mouths, telling some people one thing, and other people something else.

This is the perfect image of the clever politician! And here was Christ, they come to Him with a question, He said, "Well, just give everybody a little something that they want. Give Caesar what he wants, give God what He wants. You'll be safe and sound!"

Sounds like our politics these days: promise everybody whatever it takes to get their vote!

Now, that is very clever in politics, but guess what? It never seemed very Christ-like to me. If I asked myself how Jesus would do it, that's not the first thing that would spring to my mind. God has three persons, but only one face. He speaks to us consistently. Doesn't contradict Himself.

And that raises another problem, because you go back to Matthew chapter 6, and what do you find? You find in Matthew chapter 6 that the Lord is telling us with reasonable clarity that we actually cannot serve two masters. Remember that one? No man can serve two masters. Verse 24:

For either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Puts us rather on the horns of a dilemma. Here is Christ in chapter 22 saying give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's--just like here you have your temporal worldly master, and here you have your religious faith master, and you just give them both what they want, you serve them both. And then there He is in Matthew telling us it doesn't work.

Why on earth would be giving us advice in one chapter that He's already told us doesn't work?

Turns out this doesn't solve the problem. It actually creates a problem for us. It puts us in mind not only the possibility that Christ has two faces, God forbid; it puts us in mind of the possibility that He contradicts Himself. Not my idea of Jesus. Don't think this happens.

See, and when you think that Christ is contradicting Himself, then you have to reexamine your thinking. Maybe there's something we didn't understand about all of this, because this can't be happening. So, you go back and you look at the passage again, and it turns out that maybe we did miss something. Because, after all, Christ is the Word made flesh. That means that He is here, and His very presence here is a word of God. His actions, His very being is a word from God--so, we can't just hear what He says, we must respect who He is, and we must watch what He does.

And what did He do in this case? Well, we know. Our attention was arrested by the fact that He did something very uncharacteristic: He asked for the money. So, we go back to that and we think, "Why did He do that? Maybe that has something to do with it." And it does, because in point of fact, it's the key to the whole passage. He asked for the money, He looked at the money and said, "Whose image is stamped upon this?" When He did that, He then gave us this famous phrase "render to Caesar," and He had already by His action both begged and answered a question. He begged the question, "What belongs to Caesar?" And He answered it: what belongs to Caesar is what has Caesar's image stamped upon it.

Now we get close to that point that we all realize this is why they marveled. You're thinking to yourself, "Yes, I got it now! That's why their jaws dropped"--because He's also begging another question, and that question is, what belongs to God? And the answer is, what has God's image stamped upon it.

Well, what has God's image stamped upon it? We go all the way back to the beginning of the scriptures, the beginning of the whole Jewish tradition, the very first words that were spoken, practically, about how God is in relation to us, how He was in relation to our creation, what He intends us to be. And what does it tell us? "Male and female, He created them"--we'll get back to that--"in the image and likeness of God created He them."

What does that mean? Well, it means, in this particular passage, when you asked the question, "What belongs to God? What has God's image stamped upon it?" Well, what has God's image stamped upon it? You have God's image, I have God's image, all of us who are human beings created of His will have God's image--and that includes, who? That includes Caesar.

Isn't that wonderful? So, it looks like Christ is saying you can serve two masters, but He's not. What He's actually saying is that when you think it through, don't be fooled. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's, but remember when you do that it all belongs to God!

That's what this passage is telling us. You and I and Caesar and everything else about our human community, it all belongs to God.

Once you reach that conclusion, you realize there's no contradiction here. You can't serve two masters, you only serve one--and that master is God.

But in our practical, real life, that leaves us with a problem. I don't want to take a poll here, so you don't have to raise your hands, but I'd like to know how many of you have, at some point in your life, heard the phrase "separation of church and state," and actually thought or acted like it applied to you?

See, how could it apply to you? This is a serious question. We are a Christian people. We learn who we are from Jesus Christ--that's what it means, I think, to be Christian. He tells us about ourselves, He tells us about our relationship to God, and here He has told us a truth that God is the Master of all, that we serve Him everywhere, in everything, and always, because it all belongs to Him.

Now, if that's the case, what on earth could it mean to have a separation of church and state? That would be like saying Caesar doesn't belong to God, Caesar has his own bottom he can stand on, the state has separate place where it exists that is not under the sovereignty of God. Is that possible for us? It is not.

So that, then, leaves us with a problem. We have lived for the last 30, 40, or 50 years in a situation where--as you very well know here in Alabama, because you've just been through it--we've had people sitting on the federal bench claiming that we must respect some idea called separation of church and state. They just removed the Chief Justice of the State of Alabama from his high office on the claim that he couldn't put the Ten Commandments in the Supreme Judicial Building because of separation of church and state.

How is this possible? From our point of view, you and I both know the idea of separation is a lie--at least as they present it. It's a lie; can't mean what they say it means; can't mean that when you become a citizen you forget God; can't mean that when you become a citizen you forget His law. You know why it is especially hard for me to understand this? It's especially hard for me to understand it because we live in a country that was founded on a principle that invokes respect for God and His authority.

The Declaration of Independence, the statement of the fundamental principles in light of which our whole way of life exists, in light of which our Constitution was framed to have elections and due process and all these other things. What does it say? "All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

So, the first premise of American life is not that we have rights. That is a corollary of the first premise. The first premise is God exists, He created the world, we must respect His authority.

If those three things are not true, then it doesn't matter about unalienable rights, because what does it matter that the Creator gave us rights? First, if He doesn't exist, He couldn't have done it. Second, if we don't have to respect His authority, then it doesn't matter what He does. And if it doesn't matter what He does, then we have no claim to rights, and our whole way of life in freedom has no foundation.

Do we see this?

Here we are a Christian people. Christ, Himself, has told us that we must respect the sovereignty of God in all things. Our founding principle is based upon the invocation of the Creator's authority when we claim our rights.

And yet, we're listening to judges sitting on the federal bench talking to us about separation of church and state, and God from country, and prayer from everything in our lives. How can this be? How did we get here?

I think I know how we got here. We got here, not because we're bad people and because of that. I mean, sure, we're sinners. Examine us on any given day, and we sure have to be glad Christ died for our sins. If He hadn't, we'd be in deep, dire need of salvation. We know why that's true, because we all fall short of the glory of God.

But the fact that we're sinners doesn't necessarily explain why it is that we've accepted this particular lie. I think it's actually the case that we accept it because we're good people, and because other people have come to us and they've said, "Well, separation's in the Constitution, and the Constitution's the supreme law of the land, and we have to respect it."

And as Christian folks we've been taught in Romans and elsewhere that we should respect the law, we should obey the law. Haven't we been told that? Yes. So as good people, we say, "Well, if it's the law, we gotta do it," and so we, I think, have been put in a situation where our reverence for law has been made the enemy of our reverence for God. Isn't that sad? We've been trapped and paralyzed by this contradiction.

That is one of the saddest things about our present state and our present situation. So how do we free ourselves? There is this one problem. We're doing this because they say it's in the Constitution.

Let's think about this. We have a written constitution, don't we? Why do people write things down? Why do you write something down? So that you can, what?

[congregation: "Recall it."]

Recall it, yes, but what do you have to do to recall it? You have to go and do, what? Read it! Let's not get too fancy on ourselves here.

[congregation laughs]

You write things down so that you can read them later! In case you forgot! If you've forgotten what was there, you can go back and read it and remind yourself. We forget things, people. And other people help us to forget things, because it might be in their interest to get us all confused.

And so, the wonderful thing about having a written constitution is that when the judges say, "This is in the Constitution," what can we do? We can go read it! Yes, I know that.

I understand they've been trying to act for years now as if, yeah, you can go read it, but you don't have the right to try to understand what's in it. That's for the lawyers and the judges to do. That's for the people who have the PhDs and such.

This is the point where, out of no immodesty, I like to remind people that even if that were the case, I do have a PhD, and I did study it all.

[congregation laughs]

And so, even if it were the case you had to do all that in order to have the right to talk about the Constitution, I could do it.

But you want to know the truth? It is not the case. The Constitution was ratified by people just like you and me! And how could it have been ratified by the people if they didn't read it and understand it, and vote according to that understanding? They did! It is not the special province of lawyers and judges to interpret the Constitution of the United States. It is our right, it is our obligation, it is our duty to do so!

Let's go back and do it. We go back, we look at the Constitution, and I have done this over and over again over the years, and guess what? I've looked at it up, down, sideways, backwards, forwards, inside, outside. What have I never found in it? Any mention whatsoever of separation of church and state.

And you know why I haven't found it there? I haven't found it there for the simple reason that it's not in there. They have lied to us. There is no mention of, no requirement for, the separation of church and state in the Constitution. To tell us this is to subject us to a diabolical lie.

What the Constitution actually said was, in the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." That's all it says. It's really very simple. In case we have any difficulty, Congress is that body in Washington. We send people there, and then they forget where they come from.

"Shall make no law"--that's pretty easy.

"Respecting"--that means on the subject of or concerning.

"An establishment of religion"--even if you didn't know the history of the phrase "an establishment of religion," you would know from that phrase that Congress isn't supposed to touch it. That's all you need to know.

But "an establishment of religion" is the issue that involves the whole question of the relation between church and state, what the state will or will not do in terms of acknowledging the authority and will and laws of God. And what it says is, the Congress, which is the lawmaking body for the federal government, shan't touch this; has no right to touch it.

Well, see, this is fairly simple, then. When a federal judge tells you that you can't do this and can't do that because of separation, and cites the First Amendment, you look at him and say, "But you have no authority to talk about this. How come you're opening your mouth?

It would be a good question to ask them. It was the question that Roy Moore put to them--and even though some folks in this state in authority decided to go along with the lie, Roy Moore had the perfect, not only right, but obligation to do what he did.

Just as those private soldiers in Abu Ghraib have been told that they had a moral obligation to refuse an unlawful order, so here our officials have a moral obligation to refuse the unlawful and unconstitutional orders that come from the federal bench!

They have sold us on this doctrine that doesn't exist. And where, if you go back at look at the original life of our country at the time the amendment was passed, there were established churches in most of the states. And I mean, some of them had strict establishment, not just requiring oaths and tests of office and all of this and that, but subventions for religious schools, teaching from the Bible--the whole thing. When Jefferson was putting together the school district in Washington, D.C., the Bible was to be the basic text.

And this is the guy, by the way, to whom they ascribe the phrase "separation of church and state." In a letter he wrote to the Danbury Baptists, he referred to a wall of separation between church and state--and what he was assuring them of is that the federal government would never interfere with the right of the people in the states to determine this issue. Isn't that ironic, that the phrase was used in a context meant to assure us that what the federal judges are doing to us would never happen.

Ah! They are shrewd.

They are shrewd--but we need now to be wiser, and to take advantage of the fact that we can go back, look at our tradition, understand its application. We do not have to live their lies.

I think we have now come to a point where it's all-important that we free ourselves from the paralysis induced by this lie, because, even now as we speak, we are in the midst of that moral crisis which will, not in the next five or ten years, but in the next one or two years, determine the fate of our civilization.

And I mean by that the assault on traditional marriage. The idea that we can embrace the idea of gay marriage, and that somehow or another, marriage will survive and civilization will be OK, that we reject God's ordained understanding of the family, turn our back in this most fundamental way on what we know to be His will, and yet we will still survive, and flourish, and be strong--who believes this?

Certainly as a faithful people, we cannot. And yet, using this whole doctrine, this is what they're asking us to do.

Why is it that we must stand in defense of traditional marriage? Is it because we hate homosexuals and all this other stuff that they ascribe lyingly to our hearts?

We're a Christian people. As such, we hate sin, but we don't hate anybody, because God loved us all, and we know it, and Christ came to save us all--the sinners especially. If we have His heart and His mind, then we would act with His love, even for those, like us, who are steeped in sin.

So, that's a lie; it is not because we are "against" someone that we must defend marriage. It is because if we embrace the understanding that they are offering, it will destroy marriage in its very foundation, in its very meaning, in its heart.

Let's think about that for a minute. In homosexual relations, what are they telling us? They're asking us to embrace the idea that marriage can be based on the relationship that has--leave aside all the rest of its details--one thing that's true. It exists for the sake of the gratification of the people involved in it. It exists for the sake of their pleasure, their fulfillment. It exists for the sake of their satisfaction. There is nothing in that relationship that of necessity transcends the individuals involved in it. It all points back to them. We are being told that that idea of a selfish, self-centered, pleasure-based, self-fulfillment-based relationship can be the basis for marriage.

That's on the one hand. And then on the other, we look at the heterosexual relation, what do we have there?

If we think it through, what we have there is a relationship that by its very nature, in its very meaning, looks beyond the pleasure and satisfaction of the parties doing it. A matter of fact, the very concept of sex is one that cannot be explained apart from, what? Apart from the function of procreation.

Isn't that interesting? We never think about that. You can't know, by looking, about human sexuality. I can look at people, and so forth and so on, from this way and that, and tell which is a man and which is a woman--no, you only think so. You only know for sure if you peek.

[congregation laughs]

But why is that important? It's important because what you're peeking at is going to tell you how this person is configured with respect to, what? With respect to the function of procreation. That is the only way, at heart, that we understand the difference between the sexes. It exists only in the context of the function of procreation. Apart from that context, it has no existence.

That's why I object even to the notion that people who are doing it man/man, woman/woman, have sexual relations. They precisely don't have sexual relations. Whatever it is they're doing, it has nothing to do with sex, because sex is absent from that relationship. Sex, as such, only exists when male and female come together, and it only exists in the context of that difference in their bodily configuration that has been ordained by God for the purpose of procreation.

Now, if that's true, what happens when you remove procreation from the equation? When you remove procreation from the equation, you have removed the very heart of the meaning of that sexual relationship. But more than that, you have removed the truth that it points beyond itself--points beyond the pleasure, beyond the self-fulfillment, beyond the self-indulgence, beyond the selfishness. It points toward the existence of the child who is, in his or her existence, the epitome of that union of the man and the woman for which they long in the course of the sexual act, but which they cannot achieve, except in the moment of conception, in which God's idea of their union is published in the womb.

That's the truth of it. Remove that from marriage, and there is no marriage, because there is no true respect for the function and vocation that is involved in human sexuality, which is procreation and family life.

That has other consequences, because it means that you are taking out of marriage that which is not about selfishness. Think about it. There are parents here, I'm sure. I know I love my children--most of the time.

[congregation laughs]

No, I think all the time. I love them all the time.

But you and I both know, as parents, that there are days when you really don't like them very much.

[congregation laughs]

No, really. There are times when you walk into their room, and you just go, "Ooh, I don't like them very much."

[congregation laughs]

We know this. But there are more than that. There are days when they will bring us to joys we never knew where possible. And there are days when, in their suffering, and in their danger, and in their pain, and their sickness, they will bring us to fears and to griefs that we did not think were possible; to pain that we never thought a human heart could endure.

And there are times when we are called upon to enjoy the fruits of their existence, and others when we are called to sacrifice the fruits of our own for their sake.

This whole mélange of joy and satisfaction, of pain and grief and sacrifice, of moments when you fulfill yourself, and moments when you must completely put yourself aside--this is what it means to have a child.

And what will happen to marriage, if [we remove] that vocation of procreation, remove that which points as an arrow toward the existence of the child that expresses and transcends our unity as man and woman--what will happen? It will remove that sense of responsibility and discipline and sacrifice and selflessness which is, in truth, at the very heart of our vocation as parents. It will destroy it.

That's why we must defend marriage: because it must be based upon that truth which God, Himself, has built into our hearts, written with His finger on our hearts, so that the cry of the child becomes for us not just the voice of helpless need, but the quiet voice of God, Himself, speaking through our hearts the words that He has written there, so that our species can survive as He has ordained it.

We are in the midst of a time when that institution is under assault, precisely in a context that says that we can forget His law, forget His name, and not respect His will in the laws that are ordained for our social life. Can this be? No, not and survive.

And it's not the only thing. I could go through every issue. I could go through the issues of our social life where we have destroyed the family structure and are reaping violence and crime and poverty in neighborhoods all throughout our country. Even the issue of our national security, hinging now on this war on terror--what is terrorism? It is at its heart very simple. It's the willingness to disregard the claims of innocent life, to attack with violence those who are unarmed and without defense and going about the business of their life.

What is the very paradigm of that innocence? It is the life of the innocent child, the helpless babe, recognized throughout history as the paramount example of brutality when you would raise your sword against the helpless child.

That's the heart of terrorism.

Well, what's the heart of abortion?

The heart of abortion is to bring the force of violence against that innocent life, sleeping by God's will in the womb; that same willingness to disregard the claims of innocent human life. At the heart of abortion, at the heart of terror, it turns out that the evil that we fight is but the shadow of the evil that we do.

What happens when you go to war with a divided heart, with a divided conscience--with the confusion that results from the fact that those you kill for evil die for the sake of an evil you, yourself, will practice.

Christ has told us a house divided against itself cannot stand. Lincoln reminded us of this in the run up to the Civil War. It is as true today as it was then.

That moral confusion will surprise us soon with a moment when, in all darkness and uncertainty, the moral resolve that it takes to defend our lives against this wicked terror will be all smashed and confused by our confrontation with the truth that we slaughter others for the sake of a slaughter that we perpetrate ourselves.

God has put us in a situation where we must confront the consequences of our own moral lives or immoral acts as a people. This moral crisis runs through everything.

Final word. What does it mean if that's the case? What does it especially mean for Christians? I think it means that we are called upon to do what we have not done. We profess a love of this country, and yet we will not love her with a Christian love! For, a Christian love is not a love that aids and abets the destruction of that which you love, for the sake of self-indulgence and pleasure. No. A Christian love is that which seeks to bring the word of God's truth and the presence of His love into the life of those who can be saved by it.

Our country is like the victim in the Good Samaritan story. It lies bloodied and beaten in a ditch of lies. That great truth which acknowledged God's authority in the foundation of our country has been robbed from her, and we are called upon to bear witness to it, as only we can!

Who shall bear witness to God's existence, if not those who honor it? Who shall bear witness to God's authority, if not those who accept it? Who shall bear witness to the truth of God's merciful laws and love, if not those who live according to the truth that in His love, He sent His Son to save us, and so to reunite us in our hearts and in our minds with our God?

I think we are called upon to reject the lies that we have been told all these decades, to come back not to a separation of God and country, but to that true unity with God that Christ has bought for us with His blood--and to live it as we are called to live it, in our families, in our churches, in our schools, in our work. But also in our lives as citizens in our votes, and in our legislation, and in our judgments from the bench, we must be the overflowing water, the burgeoning fruit of that union with God which He has purchased with His blood and with His sacrifice upon the cross.

By this reassertion of that unity of God in our lives, we shall bring together faith and citizenship, we shall renew the true vocation of the American heart, which is not to stand apart from God in prideful separation and assert somehow an idea of human community that does not acknowledge our need for Him, but rather to live out that need which He has in truth fulfilled, and by being the example of that acknowledgment of the presence of His glory in our world, to restore the saving grace that our nation was meant to bring, not just to our people, but to the world.

This, I believe, is our Christian vocation as citizens. No different, after all, then our Christian vocation as such. For, if we live it well, and if we live it truly, then our nation shall be a light unto the nations--lighting, not the way to some prideful fulfillment of human destiny, but rather lighting the way to our true destiny, which is to call all people and all nations once again to walk through the gateway of our Lord unto the mansions of our God.