How To Love Your Nation Without Losing Your Soul

What Jeremiah, Jesus, and C.S. Lewis teach us about faith, flourishing, and avoiding political idolatry

Every year on July 4, as fireworks fill the skies and patriotic anthems echo across our cities, American Christians find themselves in a uniquely complicated space.

On one hand, we give thanks for the freedoms and opportunities our country affords. On the other, we wrestle with a deeper allegiance to a King and Kingdom that are not of this world.

This tension is not new. The prophet Jeremiah wrote to God’s people exiled in Babylon with instructions that must have seemed baffling: settle in. Build homes. Plant gardens. Marry. Multiply. And most shocking of all, "Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile" (Jeremiah 29:7).

Imagine how disorienting that must have been. Babylon was no godly nation. It was a pluralistic empire where God's name was not honored, and where truth was a commodity rather than a compass. And yet, God tells His people not to withdraw in fear or lash out in rage, but to dig in and bless the very place and people that had conquered and subjugated them.

The same call comes to us today. Living in a time and place that is increasingly secular and politically polarized, many believers feel pulled between two options: to assimilate into the culture uncritically, or to separate from it in moral protest.

But Jeremiah, and later Jesus, point us to a third way.

Jesus said, "My Kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36). That means while we live here, we are citizens of a greater and more lasting country. Like the City of God Augustine described, our true home is eternal, and our values will often clash with the city of man—which prizes drivenness over healthier work/rest rhythms and selfish gain over sacrificial love.

It was Jesus who first prayed to the Father not to take us out of the world but to help us flourish within it (John 17:15). It was Jesus who went outside the city gates to die for its people. And it is Jesus who sends us back into that same city to be salt and light by loving our neighbors, including those who position themselves as our enemies because of our loyalty to Christ.

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"Seek the peace of the city" is not just a strategy; it is a sacred calling. The Hebrew word for peace, shalom, carries a depth far beyond the quelling of conflict. It means comprehensive flourishing—spiritual, social, economic, and cultural. It means praying for our neighborhoods, caring for our institutions, loving our neighbors whether they agree with us or not.

During his faithful ministry in one of the world's most secular cities, Tim Keller often noted that early Christians transformed the Roman Empire not by seizing power but by serving sacrificially. They cared for the sick during plagues, rescued abandoned infants, and treated women, slaves, and the poor with dignity in a world that did not. They lived as "a counterculture for the common good."

Our world needs more of that.

But too often, the church loses its saltiness. We become indistinguishable from the political factions around us, baptizing partisan ideologies and instigating the very divisiveness we were meant instead to heal. We end up with two distorted gospels: one that merges faith with conservative nationalism, and another that blends it with progressive utopianism.

Both reduce Jesus to a meaningless mascot.

The real Jesus critiques every political tribe and affirms parts of each. His gospel affirms justice and personal responsibility, compassion for the vulnerable and the sanctity of truth, the value of tradition and the call to reform.

Allegiance to Christ means we must be willing and ready to stand apart, even when it costs us tribal belonging.

This means resisting both the temptation to withdraw in despair and the urge to dominate in pride. It means becoming a people who are deeply rooted in the gospel - living, working, and praying for the flourishing of our cities - not just for our own sake, but because God loves those cities, too.

An atheist friend once said to me, "The biggest problem I have with Christianity is Christians." Perhaps you’ve felt that, too. And we should listen humbly when our witness fails. But rejecting Jesus because His followers are flawed is like rejecting Mozart because a six-year-old plays his music off-key at a piano recital.

As C.S. Lewis famously said, "If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next." Abolition, civil rights, hospitals, and Ivy League universities - so many of these began with people whose eyes were fixed on a better country, and whose first love and loyalty belonged not to an empire, but to Jesus Christ - the Name above every name, the King above every king, and the Lord above every lord.

You and I are meant to do the same.

This July 4 holiday, as we wave flags and give thanks, let’s do so with our more lasting country and citizenship in mind. Let's hold patriotism with open hands - grateful for the privilege of living in a free country, while also being honest about her failings and that our ultimate hope lies elsewhere.

The City of Man thrives on drivenness and self-interest. The City of God brings forth rest, purpose, and love. In one, we grasp for faux freedom and identity. In the other, real freedom and identity are given to us in Christ. In one, other people exist for our benefit. In the other, we exist for theirs.

May we be citizens who love our temporal earthly country well, precisely because we belong to a better and more enduring one.

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