I Want America To Be Great . . . But Not Again!

Karl Barth, the famous Swiss theologian once told his students: “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” 

In other words, interpret current events through the lens of Biblical revelation. 

Unfortunately many Christians today take the opposite approach. They interpret their Bibles from their newspapers and thus create for themselves a cultural driven Christianity rather than a biblical based faith. Thus the teachings of Jesus, for the most part, are obscured by a nationalistic brand of Christianity.

When Christians take this approach they open themselves up to disappointment, disillusionment, and false hopes. It is also very dangerous.

For example, the well known political slogan, “Make America Great Again” is clearly incompatible with the Gospel and with God’s vision for the world. The first question any Christian should ask of this slogan is what does being great “again” mean? What exactly would a great again America actually look like? 

The qualifier “again” implies something in the past was better than it is now. What would that be?

If I had access to a time machine how far back must I go to discover a "great" America? To what time period? What set of conditions must exist for America to be great again? 

Truth is we all harbor some version of an idealized past. For whatever reason we seem to think that the “good ole’ days” were far better than the present.

This appealing slogan may represent good political strategy as a means to win over the hearts and minds of voters yearning for a return to an idealized past but it clearly contradicts the fundamental nature of the Gospel: 

God’s vision for the world (and America) is oriented towards the future. 

Quite frankly Christians ought to know better. Making America Great Again will not happen by going back to a time and place we think still exists. It doesn’t exist. Never has. I am thankful that God has moved us towards a future that is so much more promising and hopeful than our past. It is promising and hopeful because he is guiding us in that direction rather than back to some imaginary time.

One of the most surprising things I learned about the Bible when I first began reading it seriously was just how future oriented it really is. From Genesis to Revelation we discover God guiding his people towards the future.

By the time we get to the last chapter in the last book of the Bible we clearly see just how slanted the Bible is towards the ultimate future. It becomes clear that the Divine momentum throughout the Scriptures is moving forward and not backwards. 

Christianity is a future driven faith. I am convinced that many of our churches are dying today because they have failed to grasp this Biblical truth. Like the political slogan implies they are trying to Make the Church Great Again by somehow recapturing an idealized past (say the 1950s Mainline church). 

“If only we can restore the church to its former days all will be well” is a common mantra among many church members.

Well such a notion contradicts the very heart of the Gospel and the decline of many churches is the proof in the pudding. 

America will only be great once she gets in step with God’s future driven plan. As the American theologian Jonathan Edwards so aptly noted: “The task of every generation is to discover in which direction the sovereign Redeemer is moving, then move in that direction.” 

God is not retreating into some idealized sanitized version of the past but rather he is advancing into a Divinely designed future. Greatness is not and will not be found in the past.

As British missionary and missiologist Leslie Newbigin so insightfully observed: Christians are at their best when they get in step with God and follow him into his future.  

I want America to be great, I really do. But not “Again!” There is no future for us in the past. Making America Great Again, or even the church for that matter, is a pipe dream that is out of step with the forward moving Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

So when one places the mantra “Make America Great Again” alongside the larger future oriented story of the Bible one begins to see just how flawed such a political concept really is for Christians.

Perhaps Karl Barth was on to something we need to embrace.