In response, our choir teacher added a song by Lee Greenwood to our fall repertoire. I was proud to be an American back then. I believed every word of that song was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I believed America was the only country on Earth where people were free. I believed war was the only way to preserve our God given rights to liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness.
I believed that I lived in a country where there always had been liberty and justice for all. Now I know better. I know the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence, along with many who signed it, enslaved other humans. I know that America has been a democracy only since the Voting Rights Act was signed in I know that the injustices of redlining, the Chinese Exclusion Act and segregation were the law of the land.
I know that Native parents did not have the liberty to raise their own children and pass on their culture. I know many people will read that as a treasonous statement. But I am a follower of Jesus, and Scripture teaches us that pride is a sin that separates us from God.
I am not proud to be an American, but I am determined to love my country. I do not love the destruction and suffering it has inflicted on the powerless at home and abroad. I do not love its lies, its prejudice or its propaganda. But I love what America still could be β a country that welcomes the tired, the poor, those yearning to be free where liberty and justice for all is the law of the land.
I love the pain-filled, imperfect, too-slow work to face our past, make reparation and form a real democracy. I love the veterans who have risked everything to protect and serve. I love the separation of church and state, the balance of powers, and the Constitution that is a living document always able to be amended to form a more perfect union. And I will love my neighbors, those who are citizens and those who are not. It is a dangerous curse.
