Have you ever noticed at a sporting event, when the people stand to sing the national anthem, how many don’t sing? Perhaps I notice this because I myself am not singing, but it’s really quite striking, and I often wonder what their reasons might be. Of course, I suspect most of them just don’t like singing. But I sometimes wonder if there are others like me who, at some point in their life, gave the anthem some serious thought and made a conscious decision to stop singing it. But why would someone do such a thing? Well, I can’t tell you about others, but I can tell you about me. I don’t sing for reasons of faith.
When I committed my life to Christ many years ago I didn’t do it all at once. Before I realized I was doing it I was already part way there, and over the course of many years I’ve gone the rest of the way. By “the rest of the way” I mean the rest that I’ve gone. Faith is a journey and I’m not done yet.
A large part of my particular faith journey has been a journey into thoughtfulness. – I’m not using the word here as we usually use it, to mean a keen mindfulness of the feelings and needs of others, (wish I could) but simply to mean thinking seriously about the things I believe, and do, and think. – And as I thought about my life as a man, son, brother, husband, father, etc., I noticed that these things often present faith conflicts that I need to think through. And the expectation placed on me as a Canadian also presents a faith conflict; ergo the national anthem question.
NATIONAL ANTHEMS, AND PATRIOTISM IN GENERAL.
The Apostle John tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:16) and, to me, this means that everything about my God-life is going to somehow be about my love-life. The reordering of my life, to bring it into line with God, must, therefore, inevitably be about the reordering of my loves, i.e., love of wife, family, friends, strangers, enemies, self, and, of course, country.
We already know this from Jesus who says the two great commandments, that actually sum up the meaning of all the others, are, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” And “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Mark 12:30-31
Note two very interesting implications of this. First, if, as Jesus indicates, I am to devote all of my being to loving God, then the love of my neighbour is part of my love of God. And second, neighbour is an undifferentiated category that contains all those in my life who are not God. I am actually part of this group and, thus, the love I have for them should be essentially the same as the love I have for me.
This is a very hard concept so in Luke’s Gospel (10:30-37) Jesus illustrates the point with the example of a Samaritan who comes to the aid of a beaten stranger. This Samaritan fulfils the command to love neighbour as self precisely because he doesn’t see the beaten man as: a Jew, a Roman, a Greek, or as someone who’s not a fellow Samaritan, as an enemy, a stranger, or even as a brother or friend. He sees him simply as the same kind of being he himself is, with the same kind of needs he himself has, and so treats him kindly.
All this to say that, fundamental to my faith-life, which is largely my “love-life”, is Jesus’ law of love. I paraphrase: (1)No one gets to be top priority all the time, including me. (2) Pretty much everyone gets to be top priority some of the time, including enemies and me. (3) No one gets to be God, especially me. The great spiritual problem I face, however, is that almost everyone, including me, want’s be a higher priority for me than they actually should be, and some seem to want to be that absolute top priority, i.e., God. And, in my experience, the most brazen offender in this regard, apart from myself, is my country.
All countries, of course, expect from their citizens love and devotion. And I am quite happy to concede that this is a good thing. Surely love of country is a legitimate kind of love, as is love of family, spouse, school, friends, community, etc. The problem, however, is that this particular form of love so incessantly demands a higher place than it should properly have. In this respect countries are rather like mothers who insist on the love their children reserve for their best friends, or friends who insist on the love that’s reserved for a spouse.
If this is hard to see, maybe it would be helpful for us to consider the special, and very revealing word, we use exclusively for love of country, “patriotism”. This word comes from the Latin word “pater”, or “father”. It is, specifically, the love that is appropriate to your father. In a patriarchal society it’s the highest love, and so it’s the love that the county wants. I believe it’s foolish for a country to want this; the kind of foolishness born of thoughtlessness, that leads to arrogance. And I believe it’s the duty of citizens to be wise, with a wisdom born of thoughtfulness, that leads to humility. And, therefore, I believe it is the duty of the loving, wise, thoughtful, humble citizen to say “NO” to all forms of patriotism.
But for a follower of Jesus the situation is even clearer. In Matthew 23:9 Jesus tells his disciples, “do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.” Jesus has already redirected my father-love to God. How can I take that father-love now and give it a country?
National anthem singing is probably the most common way citizens are expected to declare their patriotism or, as our anthem so eloquently describes it, their “true patriot love”. I do not sing the national anthem because I am not a patriot. I stand out of respect for those who are, but my patriot love is already, and thoroughly, pledged.
Next post I’ll consider O Canada in detail, because it is such a great example, certainly the best example I know, of a national anthem that makes a thoughtless, shameless, and brazen attempt to usurp the place of God. As the old proverb goes, “One might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.” Which means, if I understand it correctly, “Now that I’ve made a mess spilling some of the beans, I might as well dump the whole load.”
PS: I'm the one in the toque.
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