Friday, December 1, 2006

A King and a Kingdom

Who's your brother, who's your sister.
You just walked past her I think you missed her.
As we're all migrating to a place where our Father lives
Because we married into a family of immigrants

So my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country or a man
My first allegiance is not democracy or blood

It's to a King and a Kingdom

There are two great lies that I have heard.
The day you eat the fruit of that tree, "you will not surely die"
And that Jesus Christ was a white middle-class Republican,
And if you want to be saved you have to learn to be like him.

So my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country or a man
My first allegiance is not democracy or blood

It's to a King and a Kingdom

My Brother Kyle introduced me to this song. (Check out the link to Kyle's blog on the right side of this page) It's by Derek Webb. I can't get it out of my head. I think it raises a good point. Where is the line that we draw in being a committed American and being a committed follower of Jesus? For me, I think that the former has to give way to the later. Unfortunately, our country doesn't teach us this anymore. I have responsibility because I live in the USA but after that what is my responsiblity? This is not a popular thing to talk about. Popularity always was over-rated.

p.s. Kyle is actually my brother "in-law" but it would seem that if we rethink our relationship to the Kingdom of America then even how we speak about relationships determined by law would change. Guess that means I always had brothers growing up and the whole time I thought I just had three sisters. That's beautiful.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So true, Doug. I would love to send you a chapter in a book that is coming out (or maybe it already has) called God in Public: Four Ways American Christianity and Public Life Relate by Mark Toulouse. I don't get excited about many books/authors, but this guy is a professor at my school (Brite Divinity), and this book is the real deal. In it he fleshes out the way we live in a culture of iconic faith in which public symbols have been used in religious settings and vice versa and how much confusion has resulted (i.e., the uproar about the removal of the Ten Commandments from courthouses, the inclusion of American flags in the church sanctuary, pictures of Jesus in the principal's office of a school, etc.). I've not read the entire book yet, but it's gotten a great endorsement from Martin Marty, arguably our country's best American religious historian at U. of Chicago Divinity School.

Anyway, I totally know what you mean about how we understand relationships. Jesus was quick to point out that his family was always much more broadly defined than our blood relations. I was sorry we didn't get a chance to talk at homecoming much, but maybe we can get together for lunch sometime over the holidays if you guys will be in Huntsville after Christmas (we'll be driving down to Houston and back sometime then). Hope all is well. shalom.