Calculating Christmas

By William J. Tighe
Touchstone Magazine

On the Story Behind December 25

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.

A Mistake

The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.

In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.

There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.

As things actually happened, Aurelian, who ruled from 270 until his assassination in 275, was hostile to Christianity and appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual “rebirth” of the sun. He led an empire that appeared to be collapsing in the face of internal unrest, rebellions in the provinces, economic decay, and repeated attacks from German tribes to the north and the Persian Empire to the east.

In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for “rebirth,” or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule. If it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.

A By-Product

It is true that the first evidence of Christians celebrating December 25th as the date of the Lord’s nativity comes from Rome some years after Aurelian, in A.D. 336, but there is evidence from both the Greek East and the Latin West that Christians attempted to figure out the date of Christ’s birth long before they began to celebrate it liturgically, even in the second and third centuries. The evidence indicates, in fact, that the attribution of the date of December 25th was a by-product of attempts to determine when to celebrate his death and resurrection.

How did this happen? There is a seeming contradiction between the date of the Lord’s death as given in the synoptic Gospels and in John’s Gospel. The synoptics would appear to place it on Passover Day (after the Lord had celebrated the Passover Meal on the preceding evening), and John on the Eve of Passover, just when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple for the feast that was to ensue after sunset on that day.

Solving this problem involves answering the question of whether the Lord’s Last Supper was a Passover Meal, or a meal celebrated a day earlier, which we cannot enter into here. Suffice it to say that the early Church followed John rather than the synoptics, and thus believed that Christ’s death would have taken place on 14 Nisan, according to the Jewish lunar calendar. (Modern scholars agree, by the way, that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33.)

However, as the early Church was forcibly separated from Judaism, it entered into a world with different calendars, and had to devise its own time to celebrate the Lord’s Passion, not least so as to be independent of the rabbinic calculations of the date of Passover. Also, since the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar consisting of twelve months of thirty days each, every few years a thirteenth month had to be added by a decree of the Sanhedrin to keep the calendar in synchronization with the equinoxes and solstices, as well as to prevent the seasons from “straying” into inappropriate months.

Apart from the difficulty Christians would have had in following—or perhaps even being accurately informed about—the dating of Passover in any given year, to follow a lunar calendar of their own devising would have set them at odds with both Jews and pagans, and very likely embroiled them in endless disputes among themselves. (The second century saw severe disputes about whether Pascha had always to fall on a Sunday or on whatever weekday followed two days after 14 Artemision/Nisan, but to have followed a lunar calendar would have made such problems much worse.)

These difficulties played out in different ways among the Greek Christians in the eastern part of the empire and the Latin Christians in the western part of it. Greek Christians seem to have wanted to find a date equivalent to 14 Nisan in their own solar calendar, and since Nisan was the month in which the spring equinox occurred, they chose the 14th day of Artemision, the month in which the spring equinox invariably fell in their own calendar. Around A.D. 300, the Greek calendar was superseded by the Roman calendar, and since the dates of the beginnings and endings of the months in these two systems did not coincide, 14 Artemision became April 6th.

In contrast, second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa appear to have desired to establish the historical date on which the Lord Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian they had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. (As an aside, I will note that this is impossible: 25 March 29 was not a Friday, and Passover Eve in A.D. 29 did not fall on a Friday and was not on March 25th, or in March at all.)

Integral Age

So in the East we have April 6th, in the West, March 25th. At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.

This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed.

It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.

Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.

Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones—a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).

In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.

A Christian Feast

Thus, December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.

And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”

Gifts That Money Can't Buy

By Dena Dyer
Focus on the Family

If you're trying to decide on a gift for your spouse, remember that handmade and creative presents are often the most meaningful.

Ask anyone to name a favorite gift that he or she has received and you'll probably hear "the drawing my child did of me" or "the poem my husband wrote to propose." Handmade and creative presents are often the most meaningful.

So if you'd like to lavish your spouse with simple, thoughtful gifts this holiday season, consider a few suggestions:

• Framed affection. Frame a picture of your spouse in a blank photo mat. Surround the picture with written compliments. List the qualities you adore about him or her, including the little things that usually go unnoticed.
• Clever notes. Leave short missives of love around the house — "you warm my heart" on the oven, "thanks for putting up with me" on the coatrack, and so on.
• A love song. If you're musically inclined, compose and perform a song for your mate. Are you a ham? Consider surprising your spouse with a performance in front of other people.
• Caring service. Does he usually clean the kitchen after you cook? Do both chores one night, and let him put his feet up. Is she the carpool and breakfast-and-lunch-making queen? Volunteer to take her shift so she can sleep in.
• Audio romance. Remember "mix tapes"? Do the same thing with a computer or digital recorder, alternating favorite songs with spoken memories.
• Poetry. Write a love poem — it doesn't have to be a masterpiece. Try an acrostic: Write your loved one's name vertically and list adjectives that begin with each letter.
• Prayer. Make a hand-written prayer journal that specifies requests you've made for your mate.
• Personal lessons. Share your talents and skills. Teach your spouse to bake a special dish, knit or swing a putter (and be sure to lean in close to demonstrate certain techniques).

I love blessing my husband with creative presents, and he's gotten good at doing the same for me. Coming up with personally tailored surprises is a fun way to demonstrate our affection. Try it; I bet you'll be hooked, too.

So, Why Is Incest Wrong?

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

There are certain questions now pressed upon us that previous generations would never believe could be asked. One of these is thrust upon us by events in New York City, where a well-known Ivy League professor has been arrested for the crime of incest. What makes the question urgent is not so much the arrest, but the controversy surrounding it.

David Epstein is a professor of political science at Columbia University, where his wife also teaches. He previously taught on the faculties of Harvard and Stanford. Last week, he was arraigned before a judge in Manhattan, charged with a single count of felony incest. According to authorities, Professor Epstein was for several years involved in a sexual relationship with his adult daughter, now age 24.

Though the story was ignored by much of the mainstream media, it quickly found its way into the cultural conversation. William Saletan of Slate.com, who remains one of the most relevant writers working on the issues of bioethics and human nature today, jumped on the story with a very interesting essay that openly asked the question many others were more quietly asking: “If homosexuality is OK, why is incest wrong?”

After reviewing the various legal arguments used to justify criminalizing incest, Saletan comes to the conclusion that genetics cannot be the fundamental basis, since incestuous sex could be non-reproductive. Similarly, the basic issue cannot be consent, since no one is arguing in this case that the sex was non-consensual.

He gets the liberal response just about right: “At this point, liberals tend to throw up their hands. If both parties are consenting adults and the genetic rationale is bogus, why should the law get involved? Incest may seem icky, but that’s what people said about homosexuality, too. It’s all private conduct.”

Saletan comes to the conclusion that the basic reason for the wrongfulness of incest is damage to the family unit. As an Ohio court ruled, “A sexual relationship between a parent and child or a stepparent and stepchild is especially destructive to the family unit.”

Now, remember that Saletan raised the morality of incest as related to the question of homosexuality. He argues that the family-damage argument against incest does not apply to homosexuality. In his words: “When a young man falls in love with another man, no family is destroyed.”

Saletan’s argument is easy to follow, and if you accept his fundamental premise, it can even make sense. But his fundamental premise assumes that there is no damage to a particular family unit if a homosexual relationship exists. That argument can be made only by ignoring the impact upon a family of origin. Beyond this, it limits the family-damage argument to an individual family, when the argument must be more broadly applied to the family as an institution.

This article is a very interesting window into the sexual confusions that lie at the heart of our age. To his credit, Saletan gets the conservative argument basically right:

The conservative view is that all sexual deviance—homosexuality, polyamory, adultery, bestiality, incest—violates the natural order. Families depend on moral structure: Mom, Dad, kids. When you confound that structure—when Dad sleeps with a man, Dad sleeps with another woman, or Mom sleeps with Grandpa—the family falls apart. Kids need clear roles and relationships. Without this, they get disoriented. Mess with the family, and you mess up the kids.

That’s a pretty fair summary. Of course, the Christian argument goes much deeper than the merely conservative argument, affirming the fact that, with exacting precision, God has spoken to the sinfulness of such behaviors — specifically condemning both homosexuality and incest. In other words, Christians move the question from mere wrongfulness to sinfulness, and place all issues of sin within the biblical account of sin and redemption.

It is extremely revealing that, for many of our fellow citizens, incest may merely “seem icky.” And yet, all around us are folks who, with a straight face, deny the inevitability of this slippery slope.

God Bless Us Every One

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Scrooge repented of his greed and changed at Christmas. His sin was not his wealth, but his misuse of that wealth. Thank God the American and British governments of the eighteenth century did not confuse wickedness with wealth. Nobody should act like Scrooge, but the problem was his love of money not his money.

As a boy I heard people laugh when a rich man died: “It will only take six feet of earth to bury him,” they said, and I became aware that hating the rich was a vice that my poor home state indulged in at will. It is, I think, one reason we were, and are, poor.

No human being should be given special treatment because of his wealth or lack of wealth. No human being should be punished because of his wealth or lack of wealth. The United States should treat each citizen justly. When justice is denied the poor, the nation suffers, but when justice is denied the rich the nation will also suffer.

Jesus does not love Scrooge more than anyone else, but He does not love Scrooge less. When the government forces Scrooge to do what it thinks proper, it removes the ability of Scrooge to freely repent and do what is good himself.

It would be immoral not to cut the taxes of the wealthy, because we are cutting everyone else’s taxes. Our present system where we take a greater percentage of the wealth of the rich is simply legalized theft based on covetousness. It enriches the state and does little to help the poor. Some citizens lose liberty and other citizens become wards of the state. You cannot free Cratchit by enslaving Scrooge.

Taxation is a necessary danger. Without consent of the taxed, any taxation is wicked and consent is hard to get. The majority is always tempted to vote themselves the property of the minority. Graft and tax breaks based on bribes from the rich are unjust, but so is pandering to the mob by stealing from the rich to enrich government.

God takes ten percent from all, rich and poor. Tyranny buys influence by pandering to the mob or the plutocrat with tax policy. Favoring either rich or poor dehumanizes one at the expense of the other.

Hatred of the rich is based on the sin of covetousness. He has and I want. Not all taxation is based on covetousness, but when we judge the rich as “not needing” his own money, then Cratchit is in danger of deciding for Scrooge what Scrooge needs based on Cratchit’s desires.

Second, hurting the rich is not the same things as helping the poor. Read the chapter “Scouring of the Shire” at the end of the Lord of the Rings. When we take from the rich, the poor never get most of the money, because those who tax use it to enrich themselves. Punishing wealth, instead of wickedness, is punishing success, and we will always get less of what we tax. Cratchit is likely to trade an oppressive individual, Scrooge, for an oppressive state. History says individuals are more likely to repent than governments!

Third, asking the rich to pay a greater percentage of their income than the poor is unjust. Property rights are an excellent measure of liberty. If I lessen one man’s right to his property, then I have made his liberty less. To let some men keep all their liberty (or property) because the state arbitrarily decides they have “too little” and to take liberty from another man because the state decides he has “too much” is unequal treatment under the law.

Finally, taxing the rich to support this particular government is empowering the real robber barons. Both political parties have wasted billions of tax money and will waste billions more if given the chance. Giving these politicos more funds is like handing the keys of the car to a drunk that is staggering out of liquor store on his way to Vegas.

You cannot redeem Scrooge by giving his money to the town looters and moochers.

The poor should receive equal treatment under the law, but so should the rich. We cannot steal from the rich and give to the poor and anticipate anything but hoods running our government. This Christmas Scrooge should give, but not because a group of moochers and looters made him. Instead, America should cut the tax burden on all and each American should pay his fair and equal percentage. Rich and poor: “God bless us, every one.”

The Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God: Starting Point for the Christian Worldview

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

One of the most important principles of Christian thinking is the recognition that there is no stance of intellectual neutrality. No human being is capable of achieving a process of thought that requires no presuppositions, assumptions, or inherited intellectual components. All human thinking requires some presupposed framework that defines reality and explains, in the first place, how it is possible that we can know anything at all.

The process of human cogitation and intellectual activity has been, in itself, the focus of intense intellectual concern. In philosophy, the field of study that is directed toward the possibility of human knowledge is epistemology. The ancient philosophers were concerned with the problem of knowledge, but this problem becomes all the more complex and acute in a world of intellectual diversity. In the aftermath of the Enlightenment, the problem of epistemology moved to the very center of philosophical thought.

Are we capable of knowing truth? Is truth, in any objective sense, accessible to us? How is it that different people, different cultures, and different faiths hold to such different understandings and affirm such irreconcilable claims to truth? Does truth even exist at all? If so, can we really know it?

As the modern age gave way to the postmodern, the problem of knowledge became only more complex. Many postmodern thinkers reject the possibility of objective truth and suggest that all truth is nothing more than social construction and the application of political power. Among some, relativism is the reigning understanding of truth. Among others, the recognition of intellectual pluralism leads to an affirmation that all truth claims are trapped within cultural assumptions and can be known only through the lenses of distorted perspective.

In other words, the problem of knowledge is front and center as we think about the responsibility of forming a Christian worldview and loving God with our minds. The good news is this—just as we are saved by grace alone, we find that the starting point for all Christian thinking in the grace of God is demonstrated to us by means of his self-revelation.

The Self-Revealing God of the Bible

The starting point for all genuinely Christian thinking is the existence of the self-revealing God of the Bible. The foundation of the Christian worldview is the knowledge of the one true and living God. The fact of God’s existence sets the Christian worldview apart from all others—and, from the very beginning, we must affirm that our knowledge of God is entirely dependent upon the gift of divine revelation.

Christian thinking is not reducible to mere theism—belief in the existence of a personal God. To the contrary, authentic Christian thinking begins with the knowledge that the only true God is the God who has revealed himself to us in the Bible.

As the late Carl F. H. Henry reminded us, “Divine revelation is the source of all truth, the truth of Christianity included; reason is the instrument for recognizing it; Scripture is its verifying principle; logical consistency is a negative test for truth and coherence a subordinate test. The task of Christian theology is to exhibit the content of biblical revelation as an orderly whole.”

That same affirmation is true for all Christian thinking. Christianity affirms reason, but divine revelation is the source of all truth. We are given the capacity to know, but we are first known by our Creator before we come to know him by means of his gift of self-revelation.

The Total Truthfulness of the Bible

Once our dependence upon the Bible is made clear, the importance of affirming the total inspiration and truthfulness of the Bible is apparent. Affirming the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible is not merely a matter of articulating a high view of Scripture. The affirmation of the Bible’s total truthfulness is essential for believers to have an adequate confidence that we can know what God would have us to know. Furthermore, our affirmation of the inerrancy of Scripture is based, not only in Scripture’s internal claims, but also in the very character of God. The God who knew us and loved us long before we came to know him is the God we can trust to give us a completely trustworthy revelation of himself.

Even so, ignorance of basic biblical truth is rampant. Remarkably, this is a problem inside, as well as outside, the church. Many church members seem as ignorant of the true and living God as the general public. Too many pulpits are silent and compromised. The “ordinary god” of popular belief is the only god known by many.

As Christian Smith and his fellow researchers have documented, the faith of many Americans can be described as “moralistic therapeutic deism”—a system of belief that provides the image of a comfortable, non-threatening deity who is not terribly concerned with our behavior but does want us to be happy.

The accuracy of the Christian worldview in the modern age can be traced directly to a significant shift in the doctrine of God. The God worshiped by millions of modern persons is a deity cut down to postmodern size.

The One True God

The one true God, the God who reveals himself in the Bible, is a God who defines his own existence, sets his own terms, and rules over his own creation. The sheer shallowness of much modern “spirituality” stands as a monument to the human attempt to rob God of his glory. The Christian worldview cannot be recovered without a profound rediscovery of the knowledge of God.

Inevitably, our concept of God determines our worldview. The question of the existence or non-existence of God is primary, but so is the question of God’s power and character. Theologians speak of the “attributes” of God, meaning the particulars about God’s revealed nature. If we begin with the right concept of God, our worldview will be properly aligned. If our concept of God is sub-biblical, our worldview will be sub-biblical, as well.

God’s attributes reveal his power and his character. The God of the Bible is omniscient and omnipotent, and he is also faithful, good, patient, loving, merciful, gracious, majestic, and just.

At the foundation of all the attributes ascribed to God in Scripture are two great truths which form central pillars for all Christian thinking. The first of these is God’s total, final, and undiluted sovereignty. God’s sovereignty is the exercise of his rightful authority. His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence are the instruments of his sovereignty.

The second of these great pillars is God’s holiness. Just as sovereignty is the great term that includes all of God’s attributes of power, holiness includes all of the moral attributes ascribed to God in the Bible. At the first level, holiness defines God as the source of all that is good, true, beautiful, loving, just, righteous, and merciful. In other words, holiness establishes that God is not merely the possessor of these moral distinctives—he is the ultimate source of them, as well. In the end, God is not so much defined by these moral attributes as much as he defines them by the display of his character in the Bible.

In other words, to say that God is righteous is not to say that he passes muster when tested against our own understandings of righteousness. To the contrary, we gain any adequate understanding of righteousness only by coming to know the self-revealing God who is himself righteous. One of the central problems of modern thought is the attempt by human beings to judge God by our own categories of moral perfection. Our proper responsibility is to bring our categories into submission to the reality and revelation of God.

The question of the existence or non-existence of God is primary, but so is the question of God’s power and character. The Christian worldview is structured, first of all, by the revealed knowledge of God. And this means the comprehensive knowledge of the self-revealing God who defines himself and will accept no rivals. There is no other starting point for an authentic Christian worldview—and there is no substitute.

An Exceptional But Not Chosen People

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

A Chosen People

I have met the Chosen People and some of them are Americans, but not all of them. To be Chosen is special, but a mixed blessing as the history of the Jewish people demonstrates.

Just as the blessings of my neighbor do not make me poor, so the Chosen status of the Jews does not make me less. As an individual standing before God, I am equal to any man or woman, but that does not mean I share all the same roles. My sex prevents my enjoying the blessings of motherhood, but that does not make me less than my wife as a human being.

In the great drama of human history, the Jews were chosen to play a special role. God gave His Law to Moses and transformed the legal, social, and political world for good. The brave fight of the Jewish people to maintain identity and liberty is uniquely inspiring. As a Christian, I believe that God took on Jewish flesh forever on the first Christmas. This singular blessing can never be changed or lost.

History, however, also contains exceptional peoples, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, that leave a deep mark on human history. The world was changed by the Mongolian people under the Great Khan. The small island nation of Great Britain created an Empire and culture that had exceptional impact on the very words I am writing and you are reading. Nations that fail their exceptional opportunities through vice disappear.

The Chosen always will be chosen, but the exceptional might become unexceptional. All men are created equal, but not all nations. Some have a big role to play and others, in God’s good providence, a small one.

It is a false humility to hide from blessing or pretend it does not exist. Economic choices in the United States impact the health of people all over the world in an unparalleled way at present. If we pretend America is not exceptional, then we will be tempted to act irresponsibly. If we acknowledge our leadership of the free world, then this great power will be tempered by great responsibility. Our very election choices must be shaped by knowledge of our exceptional status.

A minor nation can afford petty leaders, but a great nation cannot.

An Exceptional People

America is not “chosen” in God’s plan, but we are exceptional.

God created all men as equals, but not all nations are equal in importance. If you are a citizen of the United States, you are blessed to be part of a wonderful experiment and one of the greatest nations in history. You are not of greater value to God than a citizen of Liechtenstein, but you have greater power and responsibility.

America is exceptionally powerful and wonderfully modest in the use of that power. At the end of World War II, the United States was the only nation with atomic weapons. Most Empires in the history of the world would have used this great power to quickly wipe out their foes and seize the wealth of the world, but the Jewish and Christianity moral majority in the United States never considered doing this. We abused our power too often, but it should never be forgotten that we chose the hard road of the Cold War and of alliances rather than the easy road of true Imperial power. The pagan Romans with nuclear bombs would not have been so kind.

The United States is blessed with an exceptional Constitution. The genius of the Founders in balancing law and liberty amazes any objective person. The hard work of generations of Americans in making the initial promise a reality, mostly through peaceable means, is remarkable. Any nation with one leader of the caliber of Abraham Lincoln is exceptional, but the United States also found Frederick Douglass in the same decade.

Pretending we are not exceptional tempts us to moral laziness. A sports star simply is a role model to young people (are you listening Brett Favre?) and America simply is a model to all the nations of the world. We are deciding right now whether we will model a decadent and materialistic Babylon to the world or the balance between public and private morality.

Beloved Persons

Some of us are part of groups, nations, or families that are not exceptional in a good way. America’s exceptional blessing and power from God has allowed us to do wicked things as well as good ones. The shame of race based slavery in our history, when sane nations knew better, is nearly unbearable. Our treatment of First Americans was dreadful by the standards Americans set for themselves.

We quickly assert that our national shame is not, after all, our personal shame. This is true, but it means we cannot take personal pride in the greatness of America. I benefit from the Constitution, but did not write it. My duty is to preserve it.

Another problem with the great blessing of being an American is to turn our wonderful nation into an idol. We are exceptional in many ways and some of them are bad. A patriot loves his nation and is proud of her achievements, but also is ashamed when we fail. Patriots take pride when we liberate nations and shame when we torture prisoners.

In the end, Christians are called to deal with nations, but love men. We are not just a member of a group, our jobs, or a tiny fragment of humanity. There is no human being in the entire world that is unloved or forgotten by God. Every human being is created in His image and has a remarkable chance at redemption.