Independence Day

The Life of Faith and the Death of 90s America

Revelation 21:1-6 (NRSVUE)

1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;

4 

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”

5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. 

“In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world.  And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind….

Mankind.  That word should have new meaning for all of us today.  We can’t be consumed by our petty interests anymore.  And we will be united in our common interests.  

Perhaps, it is fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom.  Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation.  We’re fighting for our right to live.  To exist.

And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice ‘We will not go quietly into the night!  We will not finish without a fight!  We’re going to live on!  We’re going to survive!

Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!”

These words have a special place in my own personal canon of pop culture.  They come from the 1996 film Independence Day, which starred Will Smith, Bill Pullman, and Jeff Goldblum.  In the film, aliens invade Earth, and lay waste to cities, killing millions.  The world’s militaries counterattack individually, but are severely bloodied by the aliens, owing to their superior technology.  Still, with America leading the way, the plucky humans persist.  After American scientist David Levinson (Goldblum) finds a way to negate the aliens’ technological advantage, what is left of the American command structure shares this information to militaries around the world, and coordinates a massive worldwide counterattack to end the alien threat.  President Thomas Whitmore (Pullman) rallies American pilots stationed at Area 51, and they take down a nearby alien ship.  One by one, the alien ships are defeated, and Levinson and US Marine pilot Stephen Hiller (Smith) successfully destroy the aliens’ mothership in orbit around earth.  A joyous, united humanity celebrates, knowing that together, they have saved humanity, and the war is won.  

This film was instrumental in shaping my worldview as a small child.  In the film, America plays an instrumental role in bringing the world together, and it is American arms, American ingenuity, and American bravery that spearhead humanity’s triumph.  This seems to have been emblematic of what people in the 90s thought America was.  In the 90s, America was seen by many as the cornerstone of the cause of freedom, human rights, and the rule of law across the world.  We weren’t content to be free at home.  We felt that the world should have what we had, and we tried to share it.  

It’s worth exploring the history behind this vision.  From 1776 to approximately 1918, America was primarily inward looking, concerned with the security of its immediate borders and interests.  In 1821, then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams opined in a speech that, while America’s heart was always with those who took up the cause of liberty and equality, the new nation “Goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”  This changed in 1918, when World War I brought American troops onto European soil for the first time.  And in 1941, as western democracies were either falling or clinging to life, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked America’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, shortly before Nazi Germany and fascist Italy declared war on America too.  Rising to meet this aggression, America raised forces to fight in multiple continents, and funded and supplied its allies in this effort.  When the war ended, and a new threat to democracy emerged in the form of the Soviet Union, America deepened its worldwide footprint.  American sailors, soldiers, and airmen were based across the world, but also, America fed, funded, and developed parts of the world devastated by war, recognizing both an opportunity for service, and a real need to create a strong network of partnerships and alliances to address the Soviet challenge.  

This is all, of course, a gross oversimplification.  We cannot ignore America’s legacy of slavery and genocide at home, and it’s role in supporting dictatorships in what was once called “The Developing World” in the name of resource extraction and profit.  But it would not be wrong to state that the origins of America’s massive global footprint which we have inherited in the 21st century lie in the devastation of World War II, and efforts to help those impacted by that devastation.  These efforts were motivated by practical concerns as much as by idealism, but the point stands: in the 20th century, in Europe and in Asia, America really did feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and heal the sick, and with military might shielded many of the world’s democracies against an existential threat.  These good deeds do not cancel out the evil Americans have done, but neither does that evil negate the good which was done by Americans across the world.  Both are true.  And while Bill Pullman’s speech does reveal hints of America’s very real messiah complex, it does nonetheless point to something true: throughout the 20th century, America made life better and safer for a lot of people.  

Apparently, we are no longer interested in playing this role.    

September 11, 2001 seems to have demonstrated we were not as universally beloved as we thought.  Military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to have demonstrated the limits of our ability to spread freedom and goodwill in the world through force of arms.  And the rise of China and the return of Russia into the club of superpowers seems to have proven that not everyone wants to claim the glittering promises of 18th century Western liberalism for themselves.  The rest of the world is not made up of “Tired…poor…huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” but real people, who do not always see the world the way Americans do, or value the things Americans value.   

Even so, it’s hard to look at the foreign policy decisions made over the last few months as anything other than a rejection of the good parts of America’s historic international legacy–which, again, are very real.  Today, we don’t support democracies, we openly talk about annexing their territory.  We don’t assist people fighting against USSR revanchists, we bully them.  And we ravage support to humanitarian efforts worldwide, leaving needy people high and dry.  We do all of this, apparently, under the umbrella of “America First” policy.  On the surface, this sounds like something natural for the government of a sovereign nation to pursue.  Some will tell you it needed to happen.  History will be the judge of whether or not they were right.  But the way we have gone about it–with threats, public humiliations, and abrupt withdrawals of aid and weapons deliveries–has reeked of contempt.  I won’t even try to comment on tariffs here, because macroeconomics is definitely above my paygrade.  I can tell you that when policymakers back out of commitments to offer American aid internationally, without making any plans to replace the aid that has been withdrawn, they demonstrate that “America First” means “America first, and everyone else last.”  

The vision of the world embodied in Bill Pullman’s speech was always incomplete, always in part a fiction we bought into because it made us feel good.  But now, what truth there was in it is being systematically destroyed.  And that destruction is being enacted from within.  

For me, personally, this has been a cause of deep grief.  As someone who grew up in the 90s, to me, the American dream has never been about houses and picket fences.  To me, the American dream was that we were a nation of people who wanted to help.  That, as part of our national character, we felt it was our duty to make the world a better place.  This was the dream of a child, and it took its fair share of body blows over the years.  But I was never prepared for the possibility we would destroy it on purpose.  I don’t have that dream anymore. Perhaps it was a naive dream, but it meant something to me.  And its loss means something to me too.  

Now, it’s time to invest in a new dream.  

The crazy thing about my interpretation of the American dream, and of the history undergirding it, is how Christian it sounds.  It is impossible to miss the parallels between treating America’s place in the world as a defender of freedom, and God’s calling of Abraham, or Jesus’ giving his disciples the Great Commission.  It is impossible to miss the parallels between how Americans speak of the Axis Powers and the USSR and how scripture speaks of Pharaoh, Pontius Pilate, and the Sanhedrin.  And because of these parallels, it is impossible to avoid connecting America’s many moral failures, both past and present, with the Israelites’ decision to build a Golden Calf, or Peter’s denial of Christ, or the actions of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  This was something I did not understand until I was an adult, and something many people still want to avoid confronting today. Scripture shows us that, if you really are the world’s messiah, you give yourself to the world, and carry that burden with you to the cross.  That doesn’t sound like “America first.”  As people of faith, we have to recognize this historic moment as a reckoning with one of the most fundamental truths of scripture: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  All, including Americans.  If America seeks to be a messianic nation, only the sinlessness, generosity, and self-denial of Christ can be our standard.  Measured in this way, we have always fallen short.  

So, while it’s hard to square a policy position like “America First” with our long history of messianic rhetoric, perhaps, in the end, this policy position will finally expose what America really is–a nation like the rest of them. By forcing us to come to grips with America’s moral limitations, it demands we confront the fact that, morally speaking, America cannot save itself. This perspective only makes sense if you view human affairs through the lens of Christ, but if you are a Christian, what other lens is more important?  It is time to stop worshiping America and start following Jesus.  It is time to acknowledge that patriotism is not a virtue unless your country is virtuous, and that true virtue looks a lot more like humble foot washing than it does in casting July 4th as the day of the world’s salvation.  It is time to exchange citizenship in the American republic for the status of subject in the Kingdom of God.  Which is more important, your nation or your faith?  Choose, but do so wisely.  

And as you chose, know the good that you are claiming for yourself.  By emancipating ourselves from the Grand Narrative of American greatness, and allowing God to show us what America really is, we open ourselves up to becoming a character in the only story that truly matters.  To be a Christian is to treat the Bible not just as a book of rules to learn and examples to follow, but as a story.  After all, scripture does begin with “In the beginning.”  The Book of Revelation brings scripture to an end, and the words of Revelation 21 (quoted above) are, more or less, the final vision of reality with which scripture leaves us.  This is how the end of everything that is will look: heaven and earth will come together, undoing the damage wrought by Adam and Eve.  Death will vanish.  Suffering will cease.  Lamentation and weeping, hunger and thirst will disappear forever.  And God will make all things new, and we will be God’s people, and God will be our God.  

How does the American dream–mine or anyone else’s’–measure up to that?

To be a Christian is to believe that, somehow, there will be a day in which all this comes to pass.  All history before that, including American history, is provisional, temporary, and, at best, little more than a sign post for the great day of God’s glory.  We wait for this day with hearts of faith and hope.  And in the meantime, we can celebrate the good America has done.  It’s real and it deserves to be acknowledged.  But also, we cannot avoid acknowledging the ways we have participated in evil, and the ways in which America’s limitations as a human creation prevent it from truly standing above and beyond other nations. America is not perfect, and to treat this nation as the world’s savior would be a mistake.  We need a different loyalty, a different story, a different savior. And in Christ, we have all three. May we place our hope in Christ, and become characters in the story of his life, death, resurrection, and triumphant return. And may we trust that, while nations rise and fall, our loyalty belongs to the Kingdom of God, and in the end, the Kingdom of God will triumph.