Every time I heard someone say “We need to become a Christian nation again,” I would balk.

My first thought is ALWAYS the following:  We were NEVER meant to be a Christian nation.  We were meant to be a nation where people could practice any religion that suited them or none at all.  The Declaration of Independence only mentions God in reference to the idea that we were created somewhere… but never as an idea of worship.   Regardless, The Declaration is really just an airing of grievances and not anything that sets up our government.

The Constitution mentions God only once, in the ratification clause, by saying “in the year of our lord.”  It never once talks about religion other then to say we have religious freedom and should be separate from the state. And people who try to say otherwise are just twisting facts.

“In God We Trust” did not become a motto until 1956.  God added to the pledge in 1954.  Both of these things were a reaction to Communism and what separated our majority Christian nation from the Godless Soviet Union.

So I rail against the idea and gnash my teeth and fight and scream at the top of my lungs about how we are not a theocracy… not a Christian nation…

…but now I think I get what Christians are saying… or at least part of it… and maybe they just need to package it to make it a little more palatable to people who actually AGREE with them (like me), but don’t have to accept all those tenets to admit that we’re looking for the same result.

My epiphany occurred last night as I was watching The Big Short  The movie was good, educational, and definitely had a motive.  It explained sub prime mortgages and the housing bubble to me in a way that I had never really understood before.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s on Netflix… go for it.

But, even more so, what it explained to me was how willing man is to forsake his fellow man in order to get a bigger yacht.  It explained to me how willing people are to live beyond their means.  It explained how all anyone cared about was himself.  I remember thinking the same thing after watching Wall Street decades ago.  Both movies left me feeling somewhat nauseous and dirty.

How could people KNOWINGLY take everything another person has and profit from another person’s misery with no conscience at all?  How can people who already have enough keep wanting more knowing they are taking it from the people who have nothing?

Well, because we’re not a Christian nation, that’s how.

That’s where the packaging gets murky for me, though.  That’s where I think we non-Christians need to let our staunch beliefs in enlightenment go– because if we actually believe that we want the same thing from our fellow Americans and from our government, who cares what label the religious people want to put on it?

I’m in. Let’s be a Christian nation.

We need to treat each other right.

You hear about those companies in the 50s where they were family.  People got their Christmas bonuses and they stayed with a company for 40 years.  The company gave them stock options, and they took care of them without any law saying they had to.  They rewarded hard work and treated one another like Christians.

The workers believed in the honor and integrity of a hard day’s work.  They were proud of their company and their country and had a sense of community.  The boss came over for dinner, and you had respect for one another.

You didn’t try to hide your evil with loopholes and bailouts and accounts in the Cayman Islands so no one could get their hands on your money (or at least that’s what we like to picture).

See, the thing is if we’re a Christian nation, we don’t need to worry about a corrupt government because they would do the right things because that’s what Christianity is all about.  They would do unto others.  And there would be no need for Black Lives Matter because we’re all the same in the eyes of God and so on and so forth…

Now I know my non Christian friends are getting all itchy right about now, saying “That’s fine if that’s what Christians actually did… but when they start using the Bible to do A, B, and C…”  I get it, non -Christians, I am thinking that as I’m typing…  I hear you .  There are some things–pro-life, LGBTQ legislation–that will never jive with us…  but I’m just trying to say that I understand part of the Christian message.

I’m thinking what I believe they mean when they say they want to be a Christian nation is they want us to have morals.  They want us to do the right things.  They want us to be hardworking individuals who treat each other as we want to be treated.

In Christianity, part of the reason you do this is because you have a belief that if you sacrifice here, you will be rewarded later.  They fervently want other people to understand that’s what we’re supposed to do… and they promise that if you do there is reward. (Yes  there’s more to it.  I know.  I understand.  Accept Christ died for your sins, etc. etc.)

Now for some people (this is true for me and it’s true for a lot of Christians as well) the promise of reward is not what causes us to do the right thing.  Some people do the right thing without expecting anything in return just because we do.  It’s the right thing to do, so you do it.

I’ve come to realize that’s what people are talking about when they say they want a Christian nation.  They want people to do the right things.  When they talk about evil that’s walking the earth, they are talking about people who DON’T.  The people who say “Well, I got mine” and move on.  Those are the people who they are saying are a problem.

I think if we ALL agree that people who think only about themselves are the problem, and we’re all on the same page, then what does it matter what we call it?  Let’s just do the right thing.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” so if it’s caring about our fellow humans that we’re looking for…  if it’s having morals and a conscience, and we want to go ahead and call that Christianity, I say, “Why not?”  It’s only divisive if we choose to make it divisive.

Can I get an amen?  And an amen again?

God bless America.