We used to call it airbrushing. Today people would talk about Photoshopping. Images can be altered via mechanical or digital means, changing the entire look. Retouched photos can make people disappear completely from certain photos or insert them “magically” into others.

A good example are the photos we see on magazine covers. Everyone seems to have radiant, unblemished skin. That’s the magic of retouching photos. Women try to achieve the same effect through makeup. When we don’t like the way something looks, we try to change it.

Some people prefer their history to be airbrushed. Or Photoshopped. In the Stalin era, Russians were experts at this, removing people from historical photos when those people fell out of favor.

In school, we’re taught a retouched version of history, where blemishes are covered over and virtues are exaggerated. This isn’t unique to the U.S., of course. I’m fairly certain that every country does that. We even do it in Sunday School!

Problem is, many of us want to hold on to that telling of history. If someone challenges it, they are just “America bashing.” Any attempt to look at the original, un-retouched history is viewed with suspicion. Why not just accept the telling that makes us all feel good?

Richard Hughes wrote a book called Myths America Lives By. It was an attempt to lift the veneer of retouched history and view the world more as it really is. He looks at myths like America as a chosen nation, America as an innocent nation, America as the millennial nation. It’s a good attempt to reverse the airbrushing.

We need to do that. The perpetuation of a false view of the United States is one of the main reasons the church cannot seem to find her own identity in this country. It’s a principal cause of the conflation of church and state. As long as we see this country as some sort of extension of the Kingdom of God, we will continue to confuse service to country with service to our Lord.

Dare we take a hard look at who we are and who we’ve been?