It is common to hear the United States referred to as a Christian nation. This idea is raised in contrast to Muslim nations overseas, it is raised to discuss laws that seem fitting for us as a Christian nation, it is raised to talk about our influences and our founding fathers and the basic thread running through our culture.

I submit that this is not only false, but dangerously so.

The danger lies in the fact that, when we allow ourselves to believe that our nation is itself Christian in some fundamental sense, we set ourselves up to blur the lines between our faith and our nation. Patriotism is seen as a Christian virtue, absolute support for the military and police seen as Christian practices, despite the fact that neither of these are given in scripture. We allow ourselves to believe that what the nation does is what Christianity looks like, that we can tell a Christian from a pagan by their voting record. Israel believed they would be blessed by God because they had Abraham as their father; Americans act as though we will be blessed by God by claiming Washington as ours.

Now, it is true that John the Baptist was preparing people to receive Christ, but his words should not be read as something we must do before coming to Him. Instead John here states that this is the fruit Christ will seek to have growing on His branches; that those who are His will be producing good fruit, fruit that bears evidence of repentance. How does John here summarize this fruit? It is an opposition to materialism, it is a free giving to those in need, it is being content with what you have and not bending situations to get you more than you need. Is this the fruit of our culture? Do we live in a nation where those who hoard resources are called to task? Does our culture encourage us to live in humble means and give all we do not need to those who do, do we receive daily messages praising restraint in getting more and more? Who blankets our magazine covers but millionaires and billionaires?

When we allow ourselves to believe that this is a Christian nation, and thereby allow ourselves to believe that our nation somehow informs what our faith should look like, we end up practicing a faith that stands in direct opposition to the word of God. This culture is not Christian and trying to call it such spreads lies about what it means to be Christian. If we are to engage with the culture correctly, we must sever this notion and treat the culture for what it is. We cannot hope to grow as Christians, or show others what it means to be a Christian, if we are too blinded by our national pursuits to see the Christian life.

A lot of my reading lately has been in the book of Job, and one thing I've been thinking about is how we characterize Job's friends. Make no mistake, they were wrong about Job, and this made them terrible friends and worse comforters in his time of need. They were mistaken to think that they knew exactly what the wrath of God would look like, largely by assuming it would always happen in this life. They were especially wrong to think they could discern the will and plan of God without any help from God, just based on their own wisdom. They were wrong in a great many ways and, in the end, require Job's intercession on their behalf to avoid judgement themselves.

But they weren't entirely wrong about the content of their words. That is, they keep circling back to ideas that no man is truly blameless, that we all have sin and that this basic, common degree of sin is itself enough to justify the full wrath of God, which is a terrible thing to receive. They have a right understanding of fallen man, they have a right understanding of God as just and the judge of the living. They were wrong not because they knew wrong things, in fact much of what they say will come on evildoers is repeated elsewhere in scripture, but because they knew so little about the story that was actually playing out.

But David understands in the psalm above that God sometimes allows the unrepentant to have their best life now. To enjoy wealth and prosperity, to pass down their good things to children who will hoard them just as they have. And James warns us against showing favor to those for whom life seems to be going well, giving preference to the rich, and calls out those who gain their wealth through the unjust treatment of others to expect wrath to come. It is very tempting to look at our own situation and then look at the goodness that others experience and get angry or jealous. It is easy to lose hope that we are on the right path when the path is so hard to walk. It is easy to be like Job's friends and think that the outward experience of this life is an accurate measure of how well one is pleasing God. But like Job, we must look beyond the situation and cry out to the God who is behind it, and see that He is good, even if we don't understand what is happening right now. If we will be like David, seeking after God's face and taking our joy in knowing Him, we will not have the time or the energy to be weighed down with jealousy for the lives of others. We can trust that He who did not withhold His only Son will surely not hold back the good that He intends for us.

In light of God's promises to provide for our needs and the work He has called us to do, greed is a major affront to His character. Greed is not a problem merely because it feeds sinful behaviors, such as theft and manipulation and occasionally murder, but because of what it says of God. To hold, and especially to act on, greed is to declare that you know what you need and how to get it better than God does. This is a denial of the goodness, the faithfulness, and the knowledge of God, and an idolatrous elevation of self.

God consistently thwarts the will of those who seek their own benefit. As noted in James above, and stated multiple times by Jesus, those who put their stock in earthly treasures and power will have the fullness of their reward in this life, and even that may fall away before their very eyes. When the people complained in Numbers 11 that they wanted the fish of Egypt rather than the miraculous food God Himself had provided for them and them alone, He reminded them of His power by delivering prophesy through the elders before letting the greedy among them die of plague as soon as their mouths touched the meat they sought. When Herod planned to kill Peter in order to gain more favor and power with the Jewish leaders of the day in Acts 12, God miraculously led Peter out of the prison in a way that showcased how little power Herod really had against Him. 

It is more important to God that we have what we need to reflect His glory to the world around us than that we be comfortable or have all that we desire. We must never lose sight that God knows what He is doing, that He is not slack on His promise to provide, and that we can never do better for ourselves than He does. Let us seek after His kingdom and righteousness rather than our desires and greed, and trust that Jesus was serious when He promised that all other needs would be handled.

Oh, the myriad ways we've attempted to define a lukewarm Christian. It has become apparent that, in the modern western churches, we can apply the label to basically anyone who does not exhibit a passion for Christ in the way we expect or demand. But what did our Lord actually say of the lukewarm?​

In Revelation, where we get the term, God explains what it is about the church of Laodicea that causes Him to call them lukewarm: a belief in self-reliance and their own resources that blinds them to their deeper spiritual poverty. Wealth appeared to be doing a good enough job of meeting their physical needs, so they lost sight of the fact that their reliance was actually on God and that the greatest wealth is not physical.

The insistence on self-reliance, the desire to provide for ourselves rather than rely on God, can take forms outside of wealth. The disciples struggled with questions of status, for instance:

Immediately after this, Jesus takes a child in His arms and tells them that those who receive a child in His name receives the Father, and I have generally heard this passage used to focus entirely on that point. But Jesus is primarily dealing with the disciples, and their desire for station, and their desire for control. They must become servants to be great in the Kingdom of God. There is authority in being a parent, but the job of taking on a child is primarily one in which you serve. Children rely on adults for everything, from food to shelter to basic knowledge of how the world works, and there is a certain degree to which these things must be provided in a way that it will be fruitfully received. I cannot force my kids to learn in a way they can't learn, no matter how much authority I have in their lives or how much I'd rather teach that way. To receive a child is to receive someone helpless, in need of constant service, and to perform a thankless task that will continue for many years into the future. Picking up a child was a vivid illustration of what He was just telling them: they cannot hope to gain standing before the throne of God by taking absolute control of their world and those around them.

This desire for control, for self-reliance, to be the source of our own resources rather than subject to the will and work of God, is a form of arrogant ambition. When we allow ourselves to fall into the trap of this desire, we lose sight of our need for Christ and the glory of His work in our lives. And the result is devastating, "for where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing" (James 3:16, NASB). But we must be more like David who, despite wealth and strength and military power, still saw God as the source of all His provision and protection and saw mankind's relation to God as one of a helpless subject enveloped in an amazing grace.

David asks for blessings, for material wealth and prosperity and safety, but he never loses sight of the source of these things. In losing sight of God's provision, and thinking ourselves capable of meeting our own needs, we become like those James condemns in chapter 4 as asking with wrong motives and seeking to fill our own desires. Let us strive ever more to, like David, respond to God's provision with thankful hearts and a recognition of our own inability to do what He has done for us. May we never grow so focused on our own provision that we become lukewarm, but let it ever be said of us:

Jesus knew what awaited Him in Jerusalem. Luke tells us that "he set his face to go to Jerusalem," knowing full well what would happen there (Luke 9:51b, ESV). We know that He knew, not only because we trust in His divine foresight, but because He told His disciples what was coming.

In Mark 8, cited above, Jesus asks the disciples who everyone else says that He is, then asks who they believe He is, then celebrate's Peter's recognition that He is the Christ. Then He begins to explain what lies ahead, and Peter stands against it, and Jesus condemns that response and resumes teaching. Now, I don't actually believe that Jesus was changing the topic when He began explaining His upcoming death. What I mean by that is that, while it is widely recognized that this was all one conversation, I've heard very few attempts to connect Jesus' coming death with His questions about everyone's perception of His identity.

I submit that this is what Jesus was talking about the whole time. His questions highlighted the expectations of the people around Jesus, and how He was subverting them. He wasn't living up to what people expected of John the Baptist, but He was kinda close. He spoke like a prophet but seemed to have authority beyond theirs. He met some of the expectations of the returning Elijah, but even that didn't quite stack up. He slipped into a number of categories of what the world was expecting, but He didn't quite fit in any of them, and so people didn't know what to do with Him.

The answer, of course, was that He was the awaited Messiah, but there was a reason that didn't make the list of outside interpretations: the Messiah they were expecting really had very little in common with the Jesus that walked among them. And this is where the next part of the conversation goes. Peter, having confessed that Jesus is the Christ, is suddenly being confronted with the realization that even his own ideas of what that means are being subverted. He was close enough to see the Christ in Jesus, but not yet close enough to realize what that meant for his notions of a Christ. Jesus sets about removing false notions and replacing them with truth, Peter pushes back, and Jesus makes a very firm rebuke that forces him to listen. He then continues subverting expectations, talking about laying down one's life, taking up crosses, standing beside the Christ not in worldly victory but in suffering.

And we can enter into that suffering without shame, looking forward in joy. James notes above that our trials should be treated as occasions for joy, not because of what they are, but because of who we will be on the other side of them. Jesus, who set his face "as flint," as described in Isaiah 50:7, can also claim the surrounding lines that He would not be disgraced or ashamed; even when tortured, put on public display, stripped, hung on a cross as a reproach both from the Romans and from His religious environment (after all, any hung from a tree were accursed), Jesus could come through without disgrace because He knew what awaited on the other side.

Jesus knew what death awaited Him, and He knew what victory He would claim over it. And as such, He could go forth, confident in the knowledge that no trial or disgrace He faced on this earth would surpass the riches in glory He would receive after it. And we, who have died with Christ and share in His sufferings and His victory, can look forward with the same joy and confidence that He had, regardless of what shame the world tries to lay on us, because we too shall some day be on the other side of death.