Seeking an Understanding

by Dr. Calvin Wood

After the November election and recent developments, I have felt the need to understand my fellow Christians who are characterized in the media as Christian Nationalists, who are working to write many of their beliefs into laws in the USA as we work to heal and unite the divided nation.

Some who identify as Christians claim that we are a Christian nation and that our laws must reflect this. Their aim, as best I can surmise, is that we should make this political entity, the USA, into the kingdom of God (KOG). I ask myself, what did Jesus say about his kingdom? “The KOG is within you” (Luke 17:21, KJV) and, to Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). So the problem of turning a political realm into the KOG may be ignoring what He said. A real problem that I see is that many of the laws proposed are not shared in principle by all Christians.

For example, there is wide difference between Christians who see LGBTQ folks as fully God’s children and those who find them aberrant; those who are pro choice vs. pro life; those who feel differently about birth control access; those who feel that deviation from some outward of expression of patriotism is ‘un-American,’ even though kneeling during the national anthem may be a way for some to publicly express a feeling that perceived injustices should be addressed, etc. So perhaps the thrust to Christianize the USA may miss an important point about the freedom of will that Christ thought was necessary for us to be able to choose freely to come to Him. If these ideas are some of the deep divisions among different Christian churches about these things, how do we accommodate those who practice other religions, or none?

The notion that the KOG is within me has come to mean to me that personal spiritual transformation is the goal of the KOG, not the wielding of political influence in the world. And I find some backing for this idea when Jesus asks what profit there would be to a man to gain the whole world [political power] and lose his own soul? (Matthew 16:26). Perhaps the principle of the separation of Church and State was indeed the hand of God inspiring the founding fathers in the beginning.

As a child, I privately addressed my feelings, when bullied, by imagining having the power to punish the bully, often violently. My imaginative life found a way for me to live out fantasies by being the hero in my interior narrative. But eventually I read a book that expressed the idea of living ‘inside out.’ I soon came to realize that I truly wanted to be a man of peace inside, as well as in my public persona. But I then discovered that the neuronal pathways of my brain had been so strongly conditioned by my past that my thoughts went there automatically, even when I tried to reprogram them. The only pathway that worked for me was to appeal to God to take over my entire inner life and change me into a truly peaceful person. A downside for my slowly changing interior peace was that I recently found that I was so genuinely distressed that men in our government, that appeared to me to be hypocrites [Jesus’ most damning epithet], could be expelled from the presence of God that it genuinely caused me a new and unusual deep sadness for their souls, as if my evaluation of the situation were indeed the truth of the matter. I think change is possible. But I now feel that the salvation of souls is an individual enterprise and is not accomplished en masse.

My personal quest is to find a closer walk with Jesus through meditation and prayer, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out. May God grant us guidance in seeking healing for this Nation.