I've been thinking about this and I think the biggest thing for me is that in a church service we have opportunities to teach our people something. To teach them a different point of view than what is our default setting as people who live within our western culture. To just thank veterans for fighting for America and say "God Bless America" at the end is not teaching something new to our people. To pray for those fighting because we don't want to see anyone hurt is one step. To say thank you for fighting because now we have religious freedoms is one step, but still obvious. To thank our veterans by praying for those in persecuted nations is good too. But I just thought that putting "God Bless America" at the end just keeps people thinking the same way. To put at the end, "God Bless the Nations" or "God Bless the Whole World" would have taught something that if we are fighting these current wars for democracy around the world would be something our nation should hope for - secular or Christian.
To copy Matt Doan, my prayer for this is:
Thank you God for blessing America in so many ways
Please help us to be a blessing to the world
Please keep the soldiers safe
Please help peace to come to our world
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I agree with a lot of your feelings about patriotism and the church. Being in a military town it's even more evident than in the O.C. It's even weird for me to say the pledge. To give my allegiance to anyone or anything but God is weird for me. I don't know if cause I'm a missionary kid, but it seems to that countries are much less important to God than people.
Post a Comment