america

Today is the eve of Independence Day, the peak of the American Christian's tendency to conflate the worship of God with the celebration of our national heritage. One of the most important conversations in this era of our culture involves two problems set up by the early church: the rise of politics within the body of the church, and the wedding between the Christian faith and the empire of the world.

I remember several years ago the must-read book for Christian guys was John Eldredge's "Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul." The book presents men as unilaterally having an inner thirst for "masculinity" that needed to be quenched by "roughing it" in the woods, exerting our physical strength, and defending our women from their weaker natures. The entire time that I read it, I had to fight back questions about myself. I didn't feel drawn to any of these things that Eldredge said should be hardwired into my DNA - was I broken? was I missing something?

God's Word is very clear about how we Christians should live our lives, but we, as a culture, have become adept at setting these rules aside by either conveniently ignoring them or writing them off as metaphors or altruistic ideals.