Should a Christian be patriotic?

Yojimbo · 05-26-2003, 12:21 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Samwise
but what you people don't get is, it was CHRISTIANITY

lol

What difference does it make? They came here for freedom from persecution. They could've been any religion, it wouldn't have made a difference. It seems kind of weak to say our country was founded on Christianity since it was only coincidental that the first foreigners to escape to North America happened to be Christian.

ReformedYokel · 05-26-2003, 12:26 AM

BTW, today I was the only person to _not_ pledge to the flag... *ugh*

Quote:

but what you people don't get is, it was CHRISTIANITY

lol

So what if it was? The fact is the Puritans weren't about freedom. They were about conformity. Have you read The Scarlett Letter?

As for my personal beliefs on the whole subject:

I'm not too proud of our nation. "one nation, under God" eh? Yes, they are under God, but they don't realize it or act like it. We live in a country where money is god, where selfishness is the key to happiness. It makes me sick.

Now, on the other side of that. I am happy I live here instead of Iraq or Kenya or France. This is the best nation in the world. Isn't that pitiful?

Travis · 05-26-2003, 12:35 AM

Oh gosh, don't get me started on patriotism. I just finished a Philosophy course that was soley on patriotism, nationalism, and such loyalties and their ramifications. What a complicated subject...

barefooter · 05-26-2003, 12:53 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ReformedYokel
BTW, today I was the only person to _not_ pledge to the flag... *ugh*

'Tis ok. I sympathize. It's not some intense hatred for this country or anarchic logic that keeps me from pledging allegiance to the flag. I've just thought it through and have decided that I don't believe that it is appropriate...for me.

Travis · 05-26-2003, 12:54 AM

I don't see a lack of patriotism as being incompatible with Christianity at all.

Raphael · 05-26-2003, 02:38 AM

So should Iraqi Christians living in Baghdad (I know of four churches in Baghdad) have been patriotic towards their previous government?

Looking from an outsiders view, and no this is not meant in an accusatory way.

Isn't pledging allegiance to a flag almost idolatory?

Bogieman · 05-26-2003, 10:54 AM

Not that I think that worship services should be flag waving services, not the proper place....
I am patriotic and very proud of it. I am proud to live in a nation where I am free to worship my God as I choose. I am glad that I am free. I am proud to live in a nation that has sacrificed its own blood so that other nations might too enjoy this freedom (see world history i.e WWI WWII etc..) That makes me appreciate the good ole USA. Are we better people than the UK or French? Nope, but that doesn't mean I can't still thank God I live here.

Side note, pick up a history book (not a modern textbook). More than just the puritans came over here. Read the Declaration of Independance. Look at the words and works of the forefathers. Perfect? No. Flawed? Absolutely. Christian? Many yes! At the early stages, this government was founded on Christian principles. Don't buy into the modern revisionist historians and such who rewrite God out of our history.

Awzmgd117 · 05-26-2003, 11:19 AM

i'm not trying to write God out of history at all, its just that so often were told that this country was founded as a christian nation, and this is not entirely true.

yes many of the founding fathers were christians, and even though some of them did things that most christians today would see as being out of sync with christianity (like Jefferson) it doesn't mean that there not in Heaven now.

but the fact remains that many of the ideas expressed in the constitution and declaration of independance express ideas obviously influenced by the enlightenment, something that was not a christian movement and in some cases could be seen as going against christianity.

and, this nation was actually founded with no state sponsored religion, so how we say its a christian nation i don't know, it seems confusing in that while they wanted no state sponsored religion, the founding fathers started many of there meetings wiht prayer.

don't take this the wrong way, i pray for a revival in america so that her people will come to truly realize what it means to be one nation under God, but pushing the idea that this nation was based on christian principles solely is in accurate.
:kcool:

Travis · 05-26-2003, 11:24 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Awzmgd117
i'm not trying to write God out of history at all, its just that so often were told that this country was founded as a christian nation, and this is not entirely true.

yes many of the founding fathers were christians, and even though some of them did things that most christians today would see as being out of sync with christianity (like Jefferson) it doesn't mean that there not in Heaven now.

Really? Non-Christians can go to heaven now?

Thomas Jefferson is burning in hell right now. He was a deist, not a Christian.

Awzmgd117 · 05-26-2003, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Travis
Really? Non-Christians can go to heaven now?

Thomas Jefferson is burning in hell right now. He was a deist, not a Christian.

bad example. what i meant to say was that, some of these individuals beleived that Jesus was the way and became christians, now not all of there theology or actions seemed to line up perfectly but if they were truly saved then nothing changes that.
:kcool:

HisFreshClay · 05-26-2003, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Isn't pledging allegiance to a flag almost idolatory?

i've been wondering that too. i dunno.

ill think some more. now i have to go to an old people's home and give them cake. lol.

prov. 3:5-6

"trust in the Lord with all your heart do not lean on your own understnading. seek His will in all you do and He will direct your paths!"

Bogieman · 05-26-2003, 01:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Travis
Really? Non-Christians can go to heaven now?

Thomas Jefferson is burning in hell right now. He was a deist, not a Christian.

based on....Thats a mightybold statement.

thetick · 05-26-2003, 01:42 PM

Interesting conversation......I seem to remember the last time this topic came up those who are more "non-patriotic" people began to express their feelings and beliefs everybody else jumped down their throats, has there been a major change?

First of all, just because our country MAY have been, not in any way saying it wholly was, founded as a "Christian" nation we have strayed from that. Most people do not believe so, but that's why we have a society and nation that is at least 80% Christians most of which will be in hell. We are no longer a Christian nation, period. If we ever were we left that foundation. I don't think we as Christians should encourage a dying world that they live in a Christian nation, they need Christ, not some distorted "Christian" nation, and they need to know that.

I can't say that I would ever pledge my allegiance to the flag again. I did as a young kid for school things, but as I've thought of it, I can no longer do so.

Travis · 05-26-2003, 02:30 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bogieman
based on....Thats a mightybold statement.

http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm

Excerpts from site:

"The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being."

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820

Bogieman · 05-26-2003, 02:42 PM

Travis- Have you actually looked at that site (other than that article)? It is by it own intent anti-Christian. The home page has a cross crossed out as its logo for goodness sake. That is your source for whether or not Jefferson is in hell? Oh my.