A certain newspaper is being
criticized for having the keen grasp of the absolutely obvious. The New
York Times selectively points out the faults and successes of
"America the Beautiful" in a July 4th, 2019 editorial.
Our nation and citizens are indeed
endowed by their Creator with much beauty in its landscapes and people, but our
truest unalienable right is we are an inherently imperfect people. We celebrate our independence, but must also admit that we are not freed from our nature to be fallen, flawed and far from perfect.
Our states have never been fully
united and due to our humanity, we shall ever be to some degree always divided.
Such is the lot of all of us. We are created in God’s image, yet we have fallen
to the degree that we cannot deny our failures. The Bible states that “all have
fallen short of the glory of God.”
Our Creator’s question at the Fall
remains to the totality of humankind today. “Who told you that you were naked?”
(Genesis 3:11).
That question to Adam and Eve seems
at first glance to be as equally obvious as The New York Times opinion
column. We as a nation are sinful enough to know we are flawed and yet have
enough of the reflection of God's image to aspire to be perfect.
Who told The New York
Times we are sometimes beautiful? What standard do its editorialists
raise to show the mirror of our imperfections? What flag do they wish to
proclaim our beauty or ugliness, our nakedness or our fig-leafed clothing?
Our flag has always been tattered.
Our banner has repeatedly failed to wave. The admitted and retained slavery and
sexual discrimination in our founding documents have been continued by
selective moral superiority in all three of our governmental branches, and
elected by our fallen citizenry. Our rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of
happiness have been exchanged for rights to abort the unborn, to enslave the
underprivileged with injustice, and to pursue the indulgences of immorality.
We will always strive to form a
more perfect union but by whose standards? By whose banner? Whose flag shall we
implant upon what turf to claim our arrival at such perfection?
The knowledge gained from the
forbidden fruit endowed us to know that we are naked, prone to fear, and prone
to hide from our Creator. Adam’s first response to God’s question was to point
the blaming finger not to himself but to the woman, whose finger then blamed
the beguiling serpent.
Today, our fingers, and yes, I
include all ten of my own, point out the imperfections of others but few point
our fingers inwardly. The newspaper in New York City admits our country’s
nakedness but fails to sew for itself even some semblance of responsibility for
the ugliness. We have all contributed to polluting our spacious skies. Those
who cry out against its editorial pages’ audacity are also fouling our amber
waves. All of us who do nothing but curse the darkness rather than light
candles are dulling our purple mountains.
Every twilight’s gleaming is
followed by night but inevitably there comes the dawn’s light. God shed his
grace on us; let us pray that He mend our every flaw. Let us then pledge
to be the answer to that prayer.
