It Can Be Unpatriotic to Wave the Flag

It’s Saturday morning the week before the 4th of July weekend and I just drove home from a wonderful visit with a church member – a visit just to catch up on life. As I sat at the stop light at the corner of Millbank and Putnam Ave. a car passed with the driver holding out of the window a large American flag. At first I thought “How patriotic!” But then as I pondered the flag waving, my sense of his patriotism waned.
He was driving with one hand and his view from the driver’s side door window was three-quarters obstructed by the flag. If I remember correctly our founding fathers and mothers built our nation on the religious (some would say Judeo-Christian) value of caring for the larger community, not ourselves. Remember the words “Liberty and justice for all.” Our society was founded on the principle of caring for each other’s welfare, not just our own. It is about creating a more righteous and fair and just society for all – regardless the plethora of physical, racial, cultural differences that make up this great nation. “Liberty and justice for all.”
Now I am certain that this man did not see himself as unpatriotic…he probably wasn’t trying to be that. However too many people wave the flag and forget the essence of its meaning – stars and stripes bound together to represent the individual states united for a common good – for “Liberty and justice for all.” I think our founders probably would be happier with us if we sought with our whole beings to bring a real equality to this land and work always for the global common good instead of merely waving the flag.
Equality; sacrifice for the common good……….those words sound strangely familiar to words spoken not by a patriot, but by the One we call the Son of God. Maybe we need to remember that being a nation under God rather than under a flag is possibly the most faithful and even patriotic thing we could be.

I join you in working for God to bring liberty and justice to all. And my flag will be waving from the parsonage porch 365 days a year.