SOME THOUGHTS ON HONORING THE FLAG

For years Uni and I lived in a two-story townhouse in Houston.  From an upstairs' window we could look down on the street behind us which was filled with neat single story homes.  In the yard directly behind us was a large American flag flying from a tall pole.  It flew day and night, rain or shine.  When we first moved in, the flag looked brand new - bright red, white and blue.  But as the years passed, the flag grew worn and frayed around the edges.  Then it began to turn gray.  Pieces of it seemed to disappear.  After more years all we could see was a worn gray rag flying from the pole.  It grew smaller and smaller until one day it was gone.

In the mall the other morning, we saw a pleasant looking middle-aged lady carrying an umbrella that looked like an American flag, stars and stripes and all.  It was wet and dripping from the rain.

We see people today wearing garments that appear to be made from American flags.  Even shorts, so they can sit on Old Glory.  We see flags waved in TV commercials, especially preceding national holidays, which seem to be becoming nothing more than opportunities for sales.

I suppose all these folks believe they are patriotic, honoring and respecting our flag by displaying it boldly.  Are they?  I don't believe so!  I was taught as a child and later as a Marine Reserve, that the American flag is to be treated with respect, even reverence. There used to be rules for its proper display.

And then there are those who display a Confederate battle flag boldly, sometimes right alongside Old Glory.  Displaying a flag that represents a traitorous rebellion against the United States does not seem to me to be honoring the flag.  And again these folks feel that they are patriotic. Are they?

Some - mostly African American - NFL players have refused to stand while the National Anthem is being played; some kneeled; some simply sat on the bench.  They said that they were doing this to protest injustice.  Many of their white teammates have joined them.  And these people were immediately condemned as dishonoring the flag, often by those same persons who had dishonored the flag in the ways mentioned above.  They were even called SOBs by our President who said they should be fired!.

I suspect that this sort of righteous indignation is not only pure hypocrisy, but it is fueled by racism.  The men who kneeled were not dishonoring the flag but demanding the "liberty and justice for all" that that flag stands for.

I believe the flag is to be respected.  I still stand for the National Anthem, but I also believe that those who kneel have every right to do so; in fact, I believe they are honoring the flag much more than those who treat it as a rag or an article of clothing, or an umbrella.  I suppose that someday I may find myself kneeling with them.

But while the American flag is to be respected and honored, it is honored for what it stands for, not as a salute to "the military" as many contend.  Nor is the flag to be treated as an object of worship.  It should have no place in a church sanctuary.  It should not be wrapped around the cross.  I believe that when we confuse our Christianity with some sort of display of "patriotism" we are committing blasphemy.

Jesus demanded that we love Him over every other human relationship (Matthew 10:37).  I would think that includes our country and its flag.  He demanded that we take up our cross and follow Him (verse 38).  He didn't tell us to take up our flag.

I SAW IT ON TV!

As I watched television Sunday afternoon and evening, I was struck by how much the various and diverse programs seemed to strike a common theme.

First, there were the news and sports broadcasts and especially the scenes of NFL players kneeling or locking arms as the National Anthem was played, accompanied by the rants and name calling by our President , who claimed that any SOB who did not honor the flag should be fired (apparently forgetting that Melania more than once had to push him to place his hand over his heart as the National Anthem was played). Many athletes and even team owners shot back.

Then I watched "60 Minutes."  In one segment Oprah Winfrey had gathered 14 people to discuss our President and their thoughts on how he was doing in office.  Seven of these had voted for Trump and seven had voted against him.  Though there was a bit of civility, especially at first, it didn't take long before the discussion grew pretty heated.  Oprah seemed amazed! It seemed to me that she  must have been of the conviction that if we could just get folks together to air their opinions we would somehow achieve some sort of unity.  Such was not the case!  However, we were later given the assurance that some of the participants continued to stay in touch with each other.

Then I watched the 6th episode of the PBS series on the Vietnam War, entitled "Things Begin to Fall Apart."  This one was about events in the first half of the year 1968. The news coverage of the horrible violence and bloodshed of the two Tet offensives was changing the thinking of the American people and opposition to the War was growing.  General Westmoreland, whose solution to the conflict was simply to send in more and more troops, was relieved of his command.  President Johnson was in a quandary as to the solution.  He of course blamed the divisions in America over the War on negative press coverage.  (Sound familiar?)

The saying in the 1960's and '70's was, "America is more divided now than at any time since the Civil War!" The saying in 2017 is, "America is more divided now than at any time since the Civil War!" I don't know which "now"  saying is more correct; the divisions and divisiveness in our nation are hard to quantify.

During the First World War (the "War to End all Wars"), this phrase was coined, "The first casualty, when war comes is truth" (Senator Hiram Johnson).  I've seen this in the wars that were fought in my lifetime, including the current ones.  But while war may trigger bigger and bolder untruths, we now live in an age when truth seems to be no longer relevant, when "truth" is whatever anyone wants it to be, when "truth" and "opinion" are synonyms.

Oprah's - or anyone's - desire for "unity" is an impossible dream as long as people hold to their own versions of what is true.  I could see her amazement, almost hear her bafflement as she questioned her panel.  Some of the participants seemed to have little regard for facts; their opinions and feelings had become truth for them.

And we have a President who makes up "facts" and even contradicts himself in the same sentence.  I believe Mark Shields, the political commentator hit it right, "I mean, it was said that George Washington was the president who could never tell a lie, and Richard Nixon was the president who could never tell the truth.  Donald Trump is truly the president who can't tell the difference."  And not only is he "truth-challenged," he spouts out hateful racist and misogynist remarks, and calls people whom he doesn't like or who threaten his ego by derogatory labels.

Yes, untruth and divisiveness have always been with us; America has always been divided, but today we have these traits and actions promoted as virtues by many - from the President on down.  Even Lyndon Johnson agonized over the divisions in our country; Donald Trump revels in them.

What I've been saying is nothing new; it's been said before.  I have no solution for the problems in our nation, nor does anyone else.  But I believe that we who know and claim to follow Jesus Christ are hit with a great challenge - the challenge to really be "a city on a hill," to be "the Light of the world."

We need to pull ourselves away from political parties and cease identifying ourselves with them or with certain political viewpoints.  We need to cease giving our allegiance to a man - to stop defending and endorsing the indefensible rants and actions of Donald Trump.  We need to seek to ascertain what is really truth - the facts - not simply to accept as truth whatever agrees with our personal feelings and prejudices.

Above all, we must seek to live as followers of Christ.  We must seek to build our behavior on the standards of the New Covenant as revealed in the Bible.  We must seek to build our ethics and our politics on Biblical standards.  We must be different.

Will this bring about unity? It can! Not unity of the people of America, but of Christ's church.  Will we all agree politically?  It's doubtful.  But we should be able to discuss our differences and together seek to bring them under the Lordship of Christ.  And maybe others "will see your good works and glorify your Father in Heaven" and we might become agents of change.

HILLBILLY ELEGY

This book came out last year at about the same time the book White Trash came out.  The authors were interviewed on the various news and talk programs on TV. Both received about the same amount of public exposure and both books seem to be about similar topics.  As the book White Trash was about twice as thick (at the same price) as the other, as well as appearing to be the scholarly one, I chose it over the other.  However, I recently found a used copy of Hillbilly Elegy at the Half-Price book store, so I purchased it and Uni and I read it together. (I confess I had to look up "elegy."  Webster defines it as "a song or poem expressing sorrow or lamentation especially for one who is dead.")
 

Hillbilly Elegy, subtitled A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis was written by a young man named J. D. Vance, an ex-marine, a Yale Law School graduate and "a principal at a leading Silicon Valley investment firm." This is, as the title tells us, a memoir.  The author tells us of life growing up in rust belt Ohio in a lower middle class  family with deep roots in the hills of Kentucky, from where his grandparents had migrated after WWII. Obviously, Vance has lived out "the American Dream;" he has risen above his raisings; and yet they are still with him.

Though his family's account is filled with tales of alcoholism, drug abuse, physical abuse, poverty, family breakups and struggles, it is not much different, I believe, from that of many families in America today.  And though the book was a real page-turner and well-written, Uni and I both wondered as we read, why is this book so popular; why is it still a best-seller when the other book mentioned above seems to have fallen from public view?  This question was on our minds all through the reading.  I think I have some idea.

As we were reading the stories of the family and families in the book, Uni and I were brought back to our own extended families and those among whom we grew up.  We began to realize that either of us could have written similar stories.  Often we would stop reading to tell or re-tell stories of our own pasts which were quite similar to Vance's.  We may not have had such a colorful background nor have risen quite so far, but we share much in common with the author.

It's tempting here to do a bit of comparison, to relate some tales of the pains as well as the blessings of our own family backgrounds.  I'll resist, although a search through previous posts on this blog would reveal quite a bit.  I'm sure that any who read this post could also come up with similar tales.  In fact, what impressed me was the ordinariness of Vance's story.

Which brings me back to my question: why does this book continue to be a best-seller? Why is it a best-seller at all?  I believe that the answer is that people who read books like this have no (or little) real idea about how people like Vance's family live.  They know nothing about the lower-middle class and their struggles and problems.  To those who have "made it" or who are of the second  or third generation of those who escaped the "hillbilly" life, this is like reading of an alien country.  They had to read about it through the eyes of one of their own, one who had "made it."

Vance's struggles are very much like those of many of us or at least of those we know.  He tells of his own anguish as he's bounced from family to family, of his struggles to fit in and not ever feeling like he has, of his "Mamaw" - his one anchor in all the turmoil, of his dabblings in Christianity. (We can only hope he continues in this quest.)  He pauses occasionally in his story telling to offer brief analyses and criticisms of the plight of rust-belt families.  He seems to be still trying to put it all together, as many of his readers are probably still trying to do.

I believe that while the book will be informative for those readers who have never been exposed to this sort of life, it will also be cathartic for those of us who find ourselves in these pages.

SOMETHING HAPPENED

It has been encouraging to turn on the TV news lately; we see scenes of acts of kindness and sometimes great heroism being performed by ordinary people in Texas and Louisiana after the hurricanes.  People of all colors and religions doing amazing things for one another with no regard for their differences. But then if we continue watching we also see looting, reports of scams, people trying to make a profit off the misery of their neighbors.  And then we are once again returned to the horrors of wars and genocide and "ethnic cleansing."  What's going on here?  How can human beings be capable of such contradictory behavior?

And we talk and we talk: and we talk: TV news persons, social media, everyone has an opinion.  But though we may pay attention to all the current opinions, we might find some wisdom in the writings of a 17th century thinker.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), well-known French scientist, mathematician and philosopher, was also a devout Christian. His best-known work was his Pensėes, a volume of loosely strung together meditions on God and man. In his observations on man, he wrote: “What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe! . . . Is it not as clear as day that man’s condition is dual? The point is that if man had never been corrupted, he would, in his innocence, confidently enjoy both truth and felicity, and, if man had never been anything but corrupt, he would have no idea either of truth or bliss.  . . .  we have an idea of happiness but we cannot attain it. We perceive an image of the truth and possess nothing but falsehood, being equally incapable of absolute ignorance and certain knowledge; …” He then goes on to say, “ … so obvious is it that we once enjoyed a degree of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen.”

Pascal was a Jansenist, a member of a Roman Catholic sect which was highly suspect in the Church because its teachings seemed a bit too close to the Calvinistic Protestantism of his day. As a Jansenist, he held a high view of the Scripture. The above observations, though they show clear rational thinking and a knowledge of human psychology, obviously are colored by his knowledge of the Word.

Pascal understood. He understood the truth of Genesis 3. I believe we must go to this chapter of the Bible and the one preceding to really get a handle on what’s wrong.  The story in Genesis 3 begins in a garden, an apparently perfect garden. Genesis 1:31, says that all that God had made “was very good.” In this garden God placed the man that He had created (Genesis 2:7, 8), also apparently perfect and then created a woman as “a helper suitable to” him, also apparently perfect.  They were God-like beings, created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26, 27).

So the stage is set: a perfect couple in a perfect location, all the food you want to eat; a cushy job. Naked with no shame. It just doesn’t get any better than this. Problem: there’s one prohibition. They were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17), or penalty of death.

So what happened? The serpent tempts the woman. (We’re told elsewhere that this serpent is none other than Satan himself, a fallen being: Revelation 12:9). The woman takes the fruit of the forbidden tree, hands it to her man (who the Hebrew text says was “with her”), he eats it, and suddenly everything goes wrong.

Now I don’t believe this was some sort of magic tree. They gained knowledge of good and evil by disobeying. It was simply a test case. God had put them in a perfect environment. God apparently wanted the willing obedience of the man and woman. He gave them the freedom of choice to obey or disobey. And they disobeyed.

We see the results of the fall immediately: Guilt – a broken relationship with God and with each other; shame; attempts to cover the shame; and excuses.

Paul tells us in Romans 5:12, that through this act, sin (guilt) and death entered the human race. So when we look at man today we see, as Pascal did “that man’s condition is dual.” We see great acts of love, courage and heroism. We see horrible acts of hatred, cowardice and murder. Sometimes by the same person.

And we waste a lot of time and energy trying to shift the blame, just like the first man and the first woman. “The woman YOU gave to be with me – she gave it to me and I ate” (Genesis 3:12). “The serpent deceived me and I ate” (Genesis 3:13). We make ourselves (metaphorical) loin coverings of leaves to hide our nakedness (Genesis 3:17) and never do take the blame or responsibility. Sound familiar? Turn on your TV news broadcasts and/or talk radio and you’ll hear more of the same.

But the beautiful thing is that God Himself takes care of our guilt and our shame. In the Genesis’ story we read that “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and covered them.” And He’s done the same for us and our guilt and shame. “He made Him who knew no sin (Christ) to be sin (a sin offering) on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Bill Ball

      adapted from What Happened, 4/20/2007