dira | Cut-Tagged for Blasphemy

So I got one of those email forwards today about how terrorism is God's way of punishing us for wanting Him out of our country. I fired back a response to the effect that maybe it's all part of Allah's plan to bring the Western world into the Dar al-Islam (lit. "house of submission," the world under the rule of Muslims). And I got to thinking about that, and about that "Great Satan" thing that's often attached to the United States and I realized...

We are the Great Satan. In a cool way.

No, seriously, go with me here. You know the story of the Fall, right? The angel Lucifer, a created subject of God, becomes convinced that he should be the equal of God (better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven) and rebels, with a third of the angels behind him. At the end of the great battle, Lucifer and his followers are cast down into Hell for their sin of pride.

Now. How did the United States come into being? The rebellion of a subject state against its creator. Why did they rebel? They wanted an equal voice in government. The traditional statistic is that one-third of Americans then living in the colonies fought as Patriots.

What is Hell but the territory ceded to successful revolutionaries, as portrayed by the winners? I'm sure if England had controlled the narrative, they'd have claimed that they were punishing the uppity colonials by banishing them to that backwater and forbidding them from returning to England. And they'd have thrown in some stuff about what a wretched, burning place America was.

And just as Christian theology claims that Satan and his followers continue to reach out from Hell to recruit humans to rebellion against godly law, so does America continue to reach out all over the world, sowing the seeds of rebellion against traditional authority. It started with France and it's never stopped.

We really are the Great Satan. And I, personally, am okay with that.

I mean, if you look at the principles of Christ as portrayed in the gospels, it's pretty clear that he wouldn't have supported the founding of the United States of America. He lived in occupied territory. He was ruled by a distant Emperor. And what did he say? Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. If he'd been hanging around Pennsylvania in 1763 or '68 or '74, he'd have said, "Pay your stamp tax. Pay your tax on tea. The British Empire are our rightful worldly rulers. Be kind to each other, turn the other cheek when those redcoats come marching, and you will have your reward in heaven." Jesus didn't believe in freedom of religion. Jesus didn't believe in your right to pray in school. Jesus didn't believe in your right to not die for your beliefs. Jesus wouldn't have agitated to protect the first amendment. Why? Because Jesus didn't believe that this world we live in mattered, in the scheme of things.

And I guess that's one of the many places where Jesus and I differ.