The phrase "God Bless America" implies that God chooses favorites. This lazy phrase has saturated our Christian culture and flooded our churches and pulpits, and yet beyond an easy high, beyond a feel-good phrase to fuel our nationalistic and religious fervor—it doesn’t really mean much.
I understand patriotism. I get loving where you come from. I understand how proximity naturally breeds affinity.
It’s when these ideas of nationalism and home and country begin to define our theology or create our religious worldview that we fashion ourselves into an idol. We begin to actually renovate God in our own opulent, aggressive, materialistic image and ask that the world bow down to it.
When we imagine America as specifically blessed, we replace God’s will with our national desires. We make our country God’s focus. We act as if Divinity is on our payroll. We can then easily justify seeing those beyond our borders as inferior or dangerous or even evil.
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