Yesterday, Katie was in a store, and the cashier wished a customer on the way out to have a happy holiday weekend. The customer replied, “It’s a holiday weekend? What holiday is it?” The cashier said, “The 4th of July.” The customer replied, “Oh, I don’t celebrate the 4th of July — it’s not that important.” Katie was surprised and shared this story with our family.
Friends, you may be surprised by the ignorance or the outright hate many of our fellow citizens have toward our country. It is increasingly evident we live in different times and a different America than many of us imagine. The older you are, it is safe to say the greater your bewilderment. The change has been swift and sad.
Below is not a full explanation but is meant to help you understand part of what has taken place. The following is a summary from part of chapter 6, “Plastic People, Liquid World,” in a book titled Strange New World by Carl R. Trueman. I have been recommending this book and his more academic version, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, for months. These books are valuable if you are interested in how we got where we are with identity, culture, and politics. If you are not a reader, first search and listen to a podcast or find a video by the author, and second, become a reader.
So how are we to understand the unraveling of American patriotism and radical calls for a complete revolution in America? Carl Trueman writes that there are two contributing ideas: the plastic conception of human identity (meaning you can mold yourself to be whatever you want to be) and the liquefaction (meaning traditional, fixed narratives are now fluid) of the world around us. It is this second idea of liquefication that is impacting the calls for the death of America.
This liquefaction against traditional frameworks such as national, religious, geographical, psychological, and even biological understandings have transformed our society and western culture. The breakdown of the family, church, and nation has shown its ugly fruit.
Here are a couple of quotes that sum up how Americans who may live in the same neighborhood, town, or state have radically different understandings about America.
“We have institutions and calendars that reflect the imagined community of the nation. We still grant one vote to each person in California and one to each person in Arkansas on the grounds that we share a common cause, that of the United States as a nation. Yet so many members of that society made up of American citizens now find that the narratives that most strongly shape their identities are not those of the nation-state but rather those of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc. They can chat to friends across the globe online. They can see political events unfolding as they happen in far-off countries and feel an empathy for the people they immediately affect. They can feel an affinity for those who share the same skin color or sexual orientation in other countries, and affinity they may not feel for the neighbor living next door with whom they do not share such things. That is a situation in which conflict is bound to occur. Indeed, this explains why the social justice narrative despises our established institutions — they see them as systemically racist because they are constructed around a different understanding of identity.” – pg 124
“Modern American society is fragmenting because the imagined communities to which people choose to belong lack any shared narrative. Therefore, the terms of recognition that one group wishes to see American society adopt are often antithetical to those of others. And this leads to further conflict because the very existence of alternative narratives is a threat to a given community’s identity.” – pg 125
So, as you celebrate this 4th of July, take a moment to give thanks to God for America and pray for our neighbors. Why should we give thanks to God? Because He is the one “who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:25-27).
Happy 4th of July, Friends!