Tag Archives: culture

Myths America Lives By

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I’m having an internal struggle. Part of me wants to help people see the ugly side of American history, not in an attempt to make people look down on the U.S., but to move them toward a more balanced view of history. However, I also know that can be counterproductive; at some point the dissonance between this information and what we’ve always believed becomes so great that we reject both the message and the messenger. I can deal with personal rejection, but if the message goes unheard as well, then what’s the point?

For now, I’ll choose a more prudent course and relay information that others have presented. On Monday, I referenced Richard Hughes’ Myths America Lives By. He presents and debunks five myths that a large portion of our population accepts to some degree. These are the myths of the Chosen Nation, of Nature’s Nation, of the Christian Nation, of the Millennial Nation, and of the Innocent Nation.

  • The myth of the Chosen Nation. This goes back to the time of the Puritans, who envisioned themselves as modern-day Israelites journeying to the Promised Land. Others took that myth further, feeling the need to conquer this modern day Canaan as their spiritual ancestors had done in Palestine. Those who bought into this myth felt a moral license to do what needed to be done to oppress and subjugate non-Christian peoples.
  • The myth of Nature’s Nation. This myth sees the American way as the natural way. Men were intended to live in liberty, having freedom to do as they wished. Democracy and capitalism were God’s design from the beginning. No real justification needs to be presented, for the rightness of these ideas is self-evident. As Hughes says, this belief “might suggest that whatever foreign policies America might put in place are by definition just and right, regardless of their impact on marginalized people, and that the rectitude of those policies should be self-evident to all the people of the world” (p. 193).
  • The myth of the Christian Nation. Hughes argues that the intention of the founding fathers was to create a secular state, within which people could practice (or not) the religion they chose. Hughes admits that the belief in a Christian nation can be good when it calls us to live out Judeo-Christian morals, but it can be bad if it leads the nation to believe itself entitled by God to certain privileges.
  • The myth of the Millenial Nation. Originally, this myth was a belief that the United States was ushering in a new order which would culminate in the thousand year reign of Christ on this earth. With this nation being Nature’s Nation and a Christian Nation, there was an obligation to spread the American way to other peoples, by example or by force. Most are familiar with the concept of Manifest Destiny, the idea that the United States was entitled to take over the North American continent… and the South American continent as well, many felt.
  • The myth of the Innocent Nation. Belief in the above myths lead people to believe that the America is pure and just and her enemies are evil. The 20th Century convinced Americans that they were in a struggle for survival against evil forces that sought her destruction, be it the Axis powers, the Communists or the terrorists. In the end, it’s a struggle between those who love good and those who hate it. Holding to this myth left Americans unable and unwilling to see any motives behind the 9/11 attacks except those of evil people wanting to kill good people.

A lot of what I’m wanting to look at these days is presented very eloquently in Hughes’ book. I know that I once held to most if not all of these myths, and I know the comfort found in clinging to them. I also know they are short-sighted views of the world, sustainable only by those who refuse to concede any value to other nations. We’ve got to get past this ethnocentric world view, coming to terms with both the good and the bad of every country.

Why are the Americans so bad?

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Last month, I read an interesting article called “Are All Americans Bad?” It was written by a woman in Cuba, whose daughter had posed that question. Let me pass along some of the article. Obviously the child’s perspective is similar to that of all children: a distortion of what they have been told, an attempt to reason through the adult world in terms of their own. I share it as a reminder that there is another perspective on the world besides our own:

“Mommy, why are the Americans so bad?” With that question and an anxious look on her face, I found my little girl when I went to pick her up at her elementary school several days ago.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“It’s that Posada Carriles is a murderer and they don’t put him in prison, yet the Cuban Five didn’t do anything but they won’t let them go free. Plus they’re killing people in Libya. Are they killing children there too?”

“Ah! – now I understand. Well, it’s true that Posada Carriles is in fact a murderer, as has been shown not only from proof but because he himself has confessed to it. But Americans don’t have anything to do with that. Posada himself is Cuban,” I answered.

“The teachers says the US people aren’t to blame for what their government does? Is that true?” she asked me.

“Exactly. The US government has done horrible things throughout history. It has dropped atomic bombs; attacked however many countries it has wanted, including ours; provoked military coup d’états, murdered its enemies – those things and much more have been done by that government, but you have to remember that it’s the government.”

“The US population doesn’t always agree with what their government does. On more than one occasion they have been tricked into supporting wars against some nations,” I added.

“I’ve already spoken to you about the government, so in terms of the question, the answer is no. The Americans aren’t bad. In the first place because no one is totally bad or totally good; in second place because most of them are regular and average people, the same as us. The difference is in their language, culture, customs, their standard of living and especially the level of economic development. That’s what makes them think differently.”

The simple reaction to this, of course, is to feel sorry for these people who have been duped by their country’s propaganda, leaving them unable to see obvious truths. Which is what much of the world says about us Americans. It’s worth thinking about.

Airbrushed history

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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?

Christ and Culture seminar

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As part of my work with Herald of Truth, I got to present a “Christ and Culture” seminar this past weekend at the Greenwood Church of Christ in Greenwood, South Carolina. It was only the second time I’ve presented the full seminar, and I’ve tweaked it quite a bit since the first time.

It’s done in four sessions:

  • Session 1: “The Fish Doesn’t Know That He’s Wet”—This is a look at culture and worldview and the influence they have on people… people like us.
  • Session 2: “Alexander Made Me Do It”—A look at the major forces that shaped Western culture and the effects of those forces.
  • Session 3: “Christ and Culture”—A look at traditional responses to culture, focusing on how Christians should view their lives in this world.
  • Session 4: “God’s Ambassadors”—A discussion of our mission on behalf of the Kingdom of God, what it means to live in this world as a foreigner on a diplomatic mission.

I’m sure that I’m not through tweaking. I’ve added thoughts from Gabe Lyons’ The Next Christians, which I hadn’t read the first time that I presented this seminar. I’ve also done some reading on modernism and postmodernism, particularly some things that N.T. Wright has written. Between now and the next seminar, I’ll probably find more things to add.

If you were going to participate in a seminar like this, what sort of topics would you like to see discussed?

Note: Links leading to Amazon in this post can generate a commission for me when a purchase is made.

Is the future really that grim?

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Following on the heels of yesterday’s post, I couldn’t help but think about cultural changes. I was thinking about the warnings I hear time and again about postmodernism. To hear many talk, to have a postmodern outlook on the world is to deny the faith. Some despair of being able to reach out to postmodernists.

My question is: was modernism all that friendly to the church? I’m no expert on these terms, but from what I know, modernism changed the way we look at the Bible, not to mention the way that we look at the world. My hunch is that a modernist outlook and a postmodernist outlook each impact our views to a similar degree, just in dissimilar ways.

It gets back to one of my favorite sayings: “The fish doesn’t know that he’s wet.” When you grow up in a modernist environment, being taught to think and reason in modernist terms, it seems like the “natural” way to do things. More specifically, if you’ve always read the Bible from that point of view, other ways of looking at the Bible seem heretical. Like always, our way is the right way; anything new and different is wrong.

Postmodernism offers unique challenges to the church. But we first need to deal with the challenges of modernism, dig past its effects, before we can objectively evaluate the effects of postmodernism.

Those are my thoughts. I’d like to hear from someone who has a better handle on the meaning and implications of each of these viewpoints.