How much difference one comma makes: God, bless America.
This prayer is a sincere petition, not a foregone conclusion. The flag is flown upside down as a signal of distress, not as a sign of hatred. We must love our homeland, but love leaves no room for idolatry. It takes more love to proclaim hard truth than it does to revel in ignorance. Ignorance is a hard truth. Most Americans, indeed, many Catholic Americans, are ignorant or oblivious or apathetic about their country’s crimes. Are we ignorant of America’s idolatry and injustice? If we fly the flag proudly, then we are ignorant about the mass slaughter of our unborn. If we fly our flag proudly, then we are ignorant of American greed. If we fly our flag proudly, then we are ignorant of the world’s blood on our hands. If we fly our flag in any other way other than upside-down (as a prophetic sign of distress), then we are ignorant of the satanic forces that grip America – past, present, and (God, forbid), future.
Mark Twain puts it best, in his revised version of The Battle Hymn of the Republic:
Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps–
His night is marching on.
I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!”
We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;*
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!
In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom–and for others’ goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich–
Our god is marching on.
Nate
I think Joy Davidman (aka Mrs C.S. Lewis) also said it well when she wrote,
“Our earthly loves and joys are meant to lead us to Christ, and we must certainly ask the Christ in whom we believe to preserve them for us. Yet this is very different from using Christ without believing in him — from making Christian doctrine into a propaganda weapon, a pep talk to hearten us to go out and fight for good old materialism. We must return to Christianity in order to preserve the things we value — but we cannot return to Christianity at all unless the thing we value above all else is Christ. If we are reviving religion only in order to defend our own works, from the American Constitution down to the famous American blueberry pie, we are in effect asking Christ to save our idols for us.”
Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain, 36-37.
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