A Prayer for Our Nation?

by Richard Land

On November 11, 1938, Americans were observing the end of one world war in the shadow of another. It was Armistice Day (now celebrated as Veteran’s Day), and 1938 marked exactly two decades after the cease-fire ending World War I.

While it seemed as if the lights had gone out on the other side of the ocean as Europe fell under the darkest totalitarianism the world had yet seen in the Third Reich, a song, penned by a Jewish-American composer, sent a beacon of hope and determination through the angry storm clouds of approaching war.

Richard Land
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

Decades earlier, Irving Berlin had written the song as patriotic entertainment for a military revue. When entertainer Kate Smith approached him with her plans for an anniversary broadcast on her weekly radio program, however, he thoroughly revised the lyrics with serious, prayerful intent. Through the power of radio, “God Bless America” became an instant success.

The times we live in today are no less turbulent than they were in the global conflicts of the early twentieth century. This song has become a virtual national invocation, a musical way of joining hands emotionally around the nation’s flagpole. In our post-9-11 world, “God bless America” has become a benediction on our national suffering from terrorist attacks. It was a prayer when it was first introduced, but is it a prayer now? What does it mean when it crosses the lips of those who don’t believe in God, and why do they say it? What does it mean when Christians say it? Should God bless America? Will God bless America? And what would that America look like?

These are not idle questions, because what God does or doesn’t do in our country is no idle matter.  If America perishes, she will die from self-inflicted wounds. This is not a popular message, especially in an age that values personal choice above all else.

There was a prophet in Israel’s history who preached the same message to an indifferent and often hostile crowd. Jeremiah warned that the nation’s looming defeat and captivity by the Babylonians was God’s way of calling the people to repent and seek Him. But his countrymen were convinced that the only way to overcome their conquerors was through a strategic alliance with their former oppressor, Egypt. Jeremiah called Israel to dependence on God alone. It was not a popular message.

In Jeremiah 6:17, God describes His prophets as watchmen: “I appointed watchmen over you and said, ‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet!’ But you said, ‘We will not listen.’ ” This metaphor would have conjured up extremely familiar images to Jeremiah’s audience. Back then, if you lived in a village or a town of any size, there would have been a wall around it. That was the only earthly way a community could protect itself from outside attack. It was your only temporal hope for securing home, family, and neighborhood. The wall had gates permitting people to go in and out, but they were always manned by watchmen. These guards had assigned watches, as well as assigned places along the wall, so that at any time of day or night there was constant surveillance on the entire circumference of the horizon. At the first hint of possible trouble, these watchmen would blow a warning blast on their shofars—long, loudtrumpets—to rouse people from sleep at night or call them from workday tasks to man their pre-assigned places on the wall, to be at the ready to repel any threat.

As the townspeople went about their business, they could look up at the wall from any point in the city and see the familiar, comforting presence of the watchmen. When God sent His prophets to the people, He made sure the prophets scanned the horizon carefully. But He also directed their gaze inward, to look for threats to the people’s well-being from within their own walls. The Book of Jeremiah is a virtual blast from the prophet’s shofar that the worst dangers lay within.

That is just the situation we are in today, in the first decade of a new century. We face a far greater peril from our own immorality, degradation, and degeneracy than we ever faced from the Japanese Navy or the German Air Force or the Soviet Missile Command. 
The verses in Jeremiah, 6, immediately preceding the reference to the watchmen, describe the state of our union: “From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit” (6:13). We have made idols of our material well-being, and they have come back to haunt us.

“Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct?” the prophet asks. It used to be that when people did shameful things, at least they were embarrassed. “No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush” (6:15).

Jeremiah 6:16 records how the people refused God’s offer of sanctuary from their sin and shame: “This is what the Lord says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”

But it isn’t just those active in immorality who are helping to drag America down to unprecedented lows. We are blessed to live in a democracy, and despite the views of Christians who say we shouldn’t seek to change our nation’s morality through the political process, the reality is that the spiritual state of our union is powerfully influenced by how we vote, and whether we participate in the public policy process or not. We must vote. We must be involved in public policy.

True revival and true awakening, however, can only come from God. And that spiritual awakening will only come as redeemed individuals confess their sin and renew their vows of obedience to their Heavenly Father and as those presently unredeemed are convicted and redeemed to saving faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior (2 Chronicles 7:14).

We need to importune God for a heaven-sent awakening that will ripen into the Reformation America must have at every level of our society.

When God commissioned Jeremiah, the prophet protested that youth and inexperience rendered him unfit for the task. But God assured Jeremiah of His presence and protection, indeed of the very words Jeremiah would speak: “Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, ‘Now, I have put my words in your mouth’” (1:9). The prophet’s words were first spoken to God’s people, Judah, as they stood with their toes curled over the edge of the precipice of the coming judgment from Babylon, because they refused to repent and obey God.

Let’s not forget that if God would judge His chosen people by sending them into captivity in Babylon, He won’t refrain from judging us. But neither will God leave us without His counsel, to bring us back to Him and restore us to His blessing instead of His judgment.

Richard Land The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission www.erlc.com