God Bless America
I love baseball. It’s probably my favorite American sport. During the middle half of the seventh inning at most American baseball parks now, someone appears on the field and sings the familiar American hymn “God Bless America.” It has become a ritual as usual as Take me out to the ball game.” It puzzles me.
Does the singer really mean it? Do the fans, taking a minute away from guzzling down beer and chomping on a hot dog really, know what they are singing?
The practice started after the attacks on September 11, 2001. During the 2001 World Series, Daniel Rodriguez, the New York City “Singing Policeman,” brought tears to America’s eyes with his soaring rendition of this American anthem. He continued to sing it in many other venues, too. His voice is amazing.
During the 2008 election, Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was vilified for a diatribe he went on in a service: “God Bless America?” No, God Damn America!”
It was a call against many of the injustices perpetrated by America against black people.
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.".
His comments were played over and over in our 24/7 news cycle. It seemed shocking for a clergyman to be issuing such an unpatriotic sermon just after 9/11.
As a white American, I wonder if his comments aren’t that far from the truth-not just against black America, but about more specifically for the moral, social, political, and economic sins/evils of our time.
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord(Psalm 33:12,NIV).”
Is God are nation’s Lord, or is it entertainment, individualism at all costs, aberrant sexual behaviors, greed, lust, and disobedience to parents? The breakdown of America’s moral fiber
is nothing new. All great civilizations of the past who practiced and condoned such behavior perished. It is not America’s debt crisis or the decline of person’s 401Ks that is destroying America; it is something much deeper:
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29
They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them(Romans 1: 18-32, NIV).
It sounds like a litany of what is going on in present day America. Is God supposed to bless this?
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