I don’t want to stray too far away from the topic of our Christian nation. I want to talk, though, about the concept of tribalism. It refers to the way that we define “us” and “them.” Every society has a set of rules that applies to our dealings with “us” and our dealings with “them.” We react differently to what happens to “us” than we do when it happens to “them.” (I discussed this in the post “Glad No Parrots Were Involved“; some read this as “America bashing,” when it was intended as “tribalism bashing”—that’s why the first illustration in that post was from Great Britain).

Tribalism says we can steal from them, but not from us. We can kill them, but not kill us. We can cheat them, but we’re expected to deal justly with us. If one of us is killed, we will avenge it by killing them. We see an innocuous form of tribalism in our sports; penalties against our team almost always seem to be unfair, while penalties against the other team are justified. If our team scores a lot of points, they are going for style points. If the other team scores a lot, they are showing a lack of sportsmanship.

Tribalism can occur at different levels. It can be based on family. Gangs operate via tribalism. Tribalism can be present based on religion, geography, or politics. In the West, people are often tribalistic at a national level, while much of the rest of the world divides itself along different lines.

We have to understand that the Christian nation doesn’t respect manmade borders and territories. As Paul so ably said it, “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” (Colossians 3:11) The church isn’t made up of Haitians, Egyptians, Filipinos and Canadians. We are Christians. We are one nation.

Here’s what we have to understand. A believer in China is more “us” than a non-believer next door. A Christian Iraqi is more “our people” than a non-Christian U.S. soldier in the same place. When we talk about “our people overseas,” we aren’t talking about U.S. troops, we’re talking about our Christian brothers.

Does that mean we will operate by the rules of tribalism, cheating non-Christians because they aren’t “one of us.” Of course not. But we will put as much importance on the well-being of Haitians as we do on that of people in our own hometown. More than citizens of the world, we are citizens of heaven, which makes us ambassadors of good to the whole world.

Hollywood trivia: Dolores Hart is the only nun who is one of the voters for the Academy Awards.

Hart was a fairly successful actress when she decided to become a nun. She had starred in ten films, two of them opposite Elvis Presley. (She is continually asked about having kissed Elvis. She once remarked, “Screen kisses were limited to 15 seconds in those days. That one has lasted 40 years.”) She also performed on Broadway, winning a Tony nomination for one of her roles.

I like one story that is told about Hart. One reporter was being particularly aggressive in questioning Hart’s decision to leave Hollywood. Didn’t it seem a bit of a cop out, he asked, to leave a position from which she could influence the world and take up a life devoted to prayer? Hart replied, “It depends what you believe about prayer.”

Boom! There’s a phrase that Christians need to mull over a bit. It depends what you believe about prayer.

Non-Christians see prayer as something akin to meditation, beneficial for the one doing it, but of little use to others. Supposedly, Christians believe that the time they spend in prayer benefits not only them but the entire world.

I say supposedly because I hear more Christians than non-Christians scoff at prayer. Granted, I interact more with Christians; I recognize that. But when discussing topics like politics or pacifism, Christians seem quick to say, “All you want to do is pray? We need to do something.” [Actually, the common insult is, “So you just want to sit around singing Kum Ba Ya?”]

I believe in action. I don’t think saying “Be warmed and filled” is sufficient for the hungry. But I rankle at the suggestion that praying is “doing nothing.”

As Dolores Hart said, it all depends what you believe about prayer.

How do we avoid “bashing”? That is, how do we speak frankly about past mistakes and present ills without coming across as someone who sees no value in a given institution?

Church bashing. America bashing. Whatever bashing comes to mind. I’m trying to learn how to critique constructively rather than criticize destructively.

As I’ve pointed out before, there were always be some who prefer a Photoshopped version of history, that edited version where everything our group did was right and everything others did was wrong. Some will go the other way, validating what others have done without valuing anything that we have done in the past.

So where’s the line? How do we avoid the extremes? I’d appreciate any insights you have to give.

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?