Every time about this year, I ponder the nature of patriotism: what it means and how it is expressed. With July 4th popping up in about 3 hours, it’s on my mind. And I keep coming back to the same conclusions, year after year.
Like religion and faith, patriotism is more about what one does than what one professes. The true measure of a person’s beliefs are more accurately gauged by action than by words or rituals, whether that means going to Mass or reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
A man’s faith is only as deep as his acts. If he professes to love his fellow man, yet demonizes those different from him, he is a liar. His faith is hollow and meaningless.
1 Corinthians 13:1 puts it like this: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”
Charity is not just giving money. It’s living with people you may or may not understand and letting them live their lives they way that they understand. It is a gift, plain and simple.
The human instinct is to distrust differentness. We have an innate proclivity to marginalize those who are different from us, whether it’s a Christian marginalizing a Hindu or a Hindu marginalizing a Christian. We are hard-wired, I think, to distrust what we don’t understand.
Overcoming that instinct often takes an act of faith. Even if that is the simple recognition that some differences don’t matter that much.
It is a gift, as surely as a donation to the Salvation Army.
The same goes for patriotism.
Although there are those who would like to reduce patriotism to reciting the “Pledge” and wearing lapel pins, they are “sounding brass” and “tinkling cymbals”. I like my version of patriotism better.
It’s one where people enjoy great freedom. The freedom to agree or dissent, and know that those freedoms are protected by law. One where people can live their lives in peace, even though they might be different. One where the right to be different is legally sanctioned.
I don’t need a horn section or cymbals to provide that.
I love my country in spite of it, sometimes. It’s like my little sister who just can’t seem to get her act together at the age of 37. She screws up, but still I love her. She’s my baby sis.
I’m not real happy right now about the country and the direction it’s going, but we will have a peaceful transfer of power in a few months.
With any luck, it will be a distinguished-looking black man that takes the Oath of Office.
Keep fingers crossed.
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