WLSU: I Love My Country
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The first morning after I returned from my first trip to Italy, I woke up, went out to the front of my house and put up the American flag.
I was 20 years old and had spent a semester studying in Italy. I felt homesick. I missed American food and American people and American everything. I was not miserable in Italy. I had a good time. But I remember spending a lot of time thinking and talking about why America was better. Why America was best. I remember landing in Boston. I remember my brother picking me up and asking what I wanted for dinner. “Something American,” I said.
I remember putting that flag up and thinking, “I’m home.”
America was something about which I was religious. I wouldn’t have said that at the time. I would not have acknowledged that. But I could not only not fathom being anything other than American – I could not imagine that any other country could be as good as mine. To love my country was not just about affection or allegiance. To love America was to consciously believe that it was the greatest country on earth, that there had never been a country and never would be a country as powerful as smart, as resourceful, as successful, as free – as Good as the USA. To love my country meant to know what was wrong with other countries. To love my country was to feel sorry for people who weren’t American, who didn’t know what it was like to be so free, to be so successful, to save the world so many times.
The line between patriotism and nationalism is sometimes razor thin, isn’t it?
My friend Scott is Irish. One time a long time ago I was telling him about how America was the best. I’ll never forget his response. He said I don’t need my country to be the best to love it. I am still being transformed by that moment.
When I was a teenager, and I loved someone or something I thought I had to love them with endless burning passion. I couldn’t just love a girl – I had to think that I could not live without her. I could not just love a band – I had to believe that other bands were sellouts or wannabes. I had to idealize the things I loved and make everything about them. I had to find my identity in them.
That kind of love could not last. I had to grow up.
In St. Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, he writes that when he was a child he did and thought and said childish things, but now he has grown and has had to put those things away. In that particular letter, Paul is talking about putting away territorial behavior, favoritism, and exclusive attitudes in order to experience and engage in real love. Real love is a love that doesn’t insist on flawlessness, isn’t self-seeking or possessive. Real love doesn’t idealize or objectify. Real love says yes to what actually is.
Some people mistake both Paul and Jesus for idealists because they speak so incessantly and insistently about the power of love. They are not idealists. Their understanding of love is radically practical. Paul is talking to a community about learning how to put idealism to death so that they may finally love maturely; to love imperfect people as they are, to cease pretending they are something they are not. To love ourselves and cease pretending we are something we are not.
In light of Paul’s words, my former love of my country feels immature and underdeveloped. Loving my country no longer requires me to believe it’s the greatest country on earth. Loving my country means giving up my idealistic obsession with greatness. Loving my country means I feel a sense of connection and loyalty to it, and that I am also hurt and scared by it, and both are true at the same time. Loving my country means I can think it’s a hot mess and still say yes to it, still engage, still hope, still try. Like James Baldwin famously wrote, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” And why wouldn’t he? He loved a country that didn’t love him back.
That story I told you about when I put the American flag up after coming home from Italy? I left a part out. I lived with my dad when I was 20. And when I got home from Italy, I saw that he was flying the pride flag. And I took that flag down so I could put the American flag up. My dad, you see, was gay. He had only come out of the closet a few years earlier and he was learning how to be proud of himself instead of hiding himself.
My dad was a patriot. For nearly his entire life he flew the American flag in front of our home. During the Vietnam War he signed up to serve in the army. He also toured in support of troops in the USO. He voted in every election and made me watch every single State of the Union Address – even when the President was a Democrat (we were Republicans) – because, as he said, “It doesn’t matter if we voted for him, he’s the President and he deserves our respect.” My dad was American his whole life and knew how to be proud of that. He was also gay his whole life and was not allowed to be proud of that. And when he finally tried to figure out how to be proud of it, I was supportive – except when it got in the way of how I thought he should be.
I left that part out of the story because I hate it now. I was not concerned about my dad’s feelings. I suppose that’s normal. When we’re young we don’t quite understand that our parents have feelings or that we can hurt them.
I also didn’t think about what it meant to take down the pride flag and put up an American flag in its place. I was saying we only have room for one flag. I am an American and that supersedes anything else you might be. And you may be reading this and saying, “well, yes, that’s right: Being an American should supersede everything else.” The thing is, no it shouldn’t. No, it shouldn’t.
First of all, I am a Christian. And as a Christian, that is my primary and my ultimate identity. I have no business speaking for other religions and the claim they place on the identity of the practitioner. But I can speak as a Christian. I am going to be writing more in the coming weeks about how my Christianity and my Americanness interact with each other, but for now let me say this: Being American does not supersede my responsibility to follow Jesus. And I’ll go further than that: Sometimes following Jesus will mean that I’m not in line with America’s values, and in those times, I have to follow Jesus anyway.
Secondly, and more broadly speaking, being American does not supersede my connectedness to all of humanity. My love of my country cannot justify hatred, disenfranchisement, marginalization, or dehumanization of others. My love of my country cannot be chauvinistic, condescending, or disrespectful of people who are not from or of my country. My love of country should not lead me to hate others. Period. You do not have to be Christian to believe this. But you cannot open your mouth as a Christian if you believe otherwise. As St. James once wrote, you cannot bless God and then with the same mouth curse those who are made in God’s image.
I returned from Italy again this last summer. I did not need to put the flag up – it was already up. It’s almost always up at the DeVaul house. Old habits die hard, and I still love my country very much. But my understanding of love has shifted quite a bit.
I don’t love my country such that I will measure every other country, and every other person based on how they feel about my country. I don’t love my country such that I will defend the idea of its greatness. I don’t love my country in a way that makes me think it’s the best in the world. I don’t love my country in a way that makes me blind to its flaws, its crimes, its checkered past, or its fraught present.
No, I love my country such that I will seek to help it live into the best of its ideas and to repent of its worst ones. I love my country because it’s where I learned to walk and talk and sing and live. I love my country because it has made me, and I am part of making it. I love my country because it’s where I’m from, it’s where I live, it’s where I keep all my stuff. I love Americans even when I don’t know what to do with us. I love America because I am American, and not the other way around. I love my country such that I will not take down someone else’s flag in order to plant my own.
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