CONSENSUS...LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE GOOD GUYS

I’m thinking a little more about the church and the national interest.

I thinking that the relationship of church to nation can be and often is similar to the relationship of the home to the schools of the community.

In the ‘old’ days, when one got in trouble at school, he or she, or to use the old fashioned pronoun he, was in trouble at home as well.

Not necessarily true today.

Nowadays the school has to prove that the difficulty of the youngster was indeed a difficulty.

And so it is with our national churches. Is that phrase even applicable today.

We do have a National Cathedral. But is it really a cathedral that represents the nation. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t.

At any rate, I have noticed that when our nation is involved in an international issue, that the churches I am aware of do not pray for the success of the national effort. Most likely they do not pray or speak of it at all.
And if they do, they do not pray for the success of our arms, or of our diplomats, but rather for the success of the right or righteous party. The other side is now generally given the benefit of the doubt. Let the right side prevail as it were.

There is no longer consensus, no longer a national opinion on so many areas of contention within our society.

We are a divided nation. Not so divided as to lead to a civil war. But divided enough to provoke violent demonstrations and the like.

This was sometimes the case in the past…but there was usually more consensus as well.

Today I sense less consensus, more indecisiveness, more ignorance, more lack of understanding.

And this lack is reflected in our institutions, our churches, schools, and community organizations.

It was not always so.

How about a prayer in church on Sunday for the success of our national effort in Iraq or Afghanistan; for the defeat of the barbarians; for the good guys to win?

How about an admission and a declaration that there are indeed good guys and that we are the good guys?