Grandpa Parker was one of my core role models growing up. During middle school, I would spend a couple of weeks each summer working with him to fix up his rental home properties: painting, cleaning, patching drywall, and mowing grass to prepare these homes for their next inhabitants.

He taught me what it meant to work hard to help our neighbors—even though we were working on properties he owned and rented out, he always seemed to "inadvertently" take on tenants who couldn't find housing elsewhere, either due to low or irregular income, prior incarcerations, or other restrictions. He was lenient—too lenient, if you asked the business-minded folks in his life—on payment terms and missed payments. For him, I believe, these houses were a ministry to his community, a beacon of hope guiding an impoverished area of Topeka, KS, to the light of Jesus Christ.

For decades, my grandpa was the pastor of a small, mission-oriented church across the street from the house where he lived with my grandma—the same house where my mom and her brothers had been raised, and the same house where my grandma ran a daycare where single mothers and under-resourced families could get childcare while they worked, ensuring those kids were fed, nurtured, and loved throughout the day.

In this community, my grandparents were anchors, and their house was the hub of the community, an extension of the church, open to the needs of their neighbors at all hours.

I loved my grandparents. They were remarkable people and incredible examples of what it means to take the teachings of Jesus seriously as they gave of themselves for the benefit of the people around them.

And yet.

My grandparents were imperfect. Their home had few boundaries when it came to the needs of their neighbors, which took an emotional toll on their entire family (as my grandma describes in her memoir). They held theological convictions that resulted in damaging perspectives on women, gay and queer folks, and other marginalized groups in society. At times they didn't live up to their own ideals.

My point is not to disparage my grandparents at all. My point is that they were human with room for growth, as are all of us.

They did the best they could with what they had, and the fact that they still fell short of the target does not diminish the good they brought into the world. On the contrary, it reminds us of their humanity and, as we consider my grandma and grandpa's histories, it illustrates just how remarkable they actually were.

If I could talk to them now, I guarantee you they would tell me just how flawed they were. If I told them I wanted to be like them as I aged, they would laugh and tell me they hoped I would learn from their lives and be better.

And that is the crux of what I'm hoping to say in this reflection:

We can't build something remarkable unless we're able to honestly confess and confront the areas that need improvement.

This applies to our nation in the same way that it applies to our personal character.

Making America "Great" Again

The United States of America has been remarkable in the history of the world. This is true, despite its many shortcomings. And I think all of us aspire to continue building our nation into something great, don't we? I know I do, and I expect if you're reading this, you do, too.

We have somewhat different visions for what "great" means, of course, which is to be expected. My concern today is not to tackle those competing visions, although for those of us that profess to follow Jesus, that vision ought to be centered on the expansive beauty of the light of Christ. That discussion is important, and while I don't expect us to come to complete agreement, we ought to be able to have meaningful discussions about it.

But I think there's a more fundamental issue at stake for us today, because we have an administration hell-bent on erasing the mistakes of our nation's past, threatening to erase our ability to critique our nation's failures in order to build a better future (here's the Executive Order, and here's the counter-point).

We can't build something remarkable unless we're able to honestly confess and confront the areas that need improvement.

In recent years, I think we Americans have lost this sense of honesty and critical self-evaluation that lie at the foundation of patriotism. True patriotism requires confronting those areas of failure and working toward a better nation. A patriot cannot uncritically celebrate their country, as if it's never made a mistake. Nations are made up of (and run by) humans, and therefore are imperfect. Though we strive for perfection, we know we have not achieved it. Anyone who says otherwise is a nationalist, not a patriot.

The Christian theologian Roger Oleson offers a helpful distinction between patriotism and nationalism:

Patriotism is honest about the country’s failures and urges leaders to push on toward better achievements of its founding ideals.  Nationalism rejects all criticism of country as almost (if not exactly) treason. (from "Patriotism vs. Nationalism", Roger Oleson, 2023)

If we want our nation to be a beacon of hope in the world, an image of what Grandpa Parker was trying to build in his neighborhood in Topeka, we have to be honest about our history. We have to acknowledge it, study, learn from it, and work to build something better. Erasing our past doesn't empower us, it creates an illusion of "greatness" to use as a foundation for tomorrow—an ephemeral foundation that will collapse, taking all of us with it.

This Fourth of July, as we celebrate 250 years since the founding of our nation, let's be patriots. Let's remember our history, both its bright spots and its dark spots. Let's build a United States of America that makes us proud.