Embedded… God and Country

Greetings Trekker,

As I take pen in hand, it is September 17… Constitutional Day here in the United States. On this date in 1789, 222 years ago, which makes our constitutional government one of the oldest in the history of the world, the US Constitution was signed.

Some patriots of the day didn’t even show up, believing the old Articles of Confederation needed simply to be amended. One of those was “Common Sense” author Thomas Paine who proclaimed, “These are the times that try men’s souls”. Paine, a deist, but not a professing Christian, yet stated at this time, “But where say some is the king of America? I’ll tell you friend, he reigns above, and doth make havoc of mankind… Let it (the law) be brought forth and placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know… that in America, the law is King.”

Many of our forefathers disagreed on the “how” of government by and for the people, but they all held certain truths to be self-evident. No such truth was more self-evident than that there is a God who is alive and active in the affairs of men! Thomas Jefferson, another patriot not known for his strict, orthodox Christian views, proclaimed as President, “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time… can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed the only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.” It was not Alexander Solzinitzen who first said in 1976 “we have forgotten God”. It was Jefferson almost two hundred years before!

Trekker, for a long time I have grown weary of the arguments surrounding the separation of church and state. Yes, they are separate, but they always come together in one entity… man. His unbiquitous faith in God simply IS! So might God show up in the affairs of men? On a recent road swing back East, my wife and I decided to visit Jamestown in Virginia and look into the “constitution” of the men who planted the first settlement in the new world in 1607, to see for ourselves.

What we found was revealing indeed! First, those early settlers did not land on America’s shore for religious purposes. All males, 144 from 27-57 years of age, were sent out by the Virginia Company of London on a commercial venture to plant the first permanent settlement. But… there at Jamestown they early erected a church, the foundation of which remains today. That was not what they were commissioned to do, but God worship was embedded in who they were as rag-tag Englishmen. So it was in the church, a major structure at that time, that the first representative legislative assembly in the history of our country convened June 30 to August 4, 1619. Imagine that… a legislative body meeting in a church! Why? Because trekker, faith was embedded in the men who founded our country, who built a church as a first priority structure, and who never dreamed that church and state, though separate institutions, were incompatible. I recall a Billy Graham statement years ago: “Yes, the Fathers of our country believed in the separation of church and state, but not in the separation of the state from the church, or the church from the state.” Excavations at Jamestown prove the point. And by the way, there is erected there as well, on federal land, a huge cross, clearly demonstrating the symbiosis of church and state.

Also at the Jamestown national historic site is a minature-like Washington Monument. The only writing on the monument are these words of advice (1606) from the commissioning London Council for Virginia to the Colony: “Lastly and chiefly, the way to prosper and achieve good success is to make yourselves all of one mind for the God of your country (England), and your own, and to serve and fear God, the ground of all goodness, for every plantation which our heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted out.” Trekker, this is amazing! Those who first came to plant a settlement, the beginning of our country, were advised, even on a commercial venture, that if God was not in it, if His blessing was not upon them, it wouldn’t last!

There is a formerly little used word that has become very popular in recent years. The word is “embedded”. Our US forces entering Iraq after 9/11 transported journalists with them, making such journalists a part of the force. This policy decision by the Department of Defense was to destroy once and for all the “we” vs. “they” mentality concerning the press. Nothing to hide…journalists inside the camp! Now, I see faith in God as something not to hide; it is a major component of who we are. Faith was embedded in man from the beginning of our country. Church and state cannot be separated from each other. Men of faith comprise both! Faith in God and freedom are inseparable!

Yes, Thomas Paine wrote “Common Sense”. Something tells me if he were alive today he might write a pamphlet entitled, “What Happened to Common Sense.”

Trekker, I’ve been reflecting recently on that great principle found in the book of Proverbs, “Without vision, the people perish!” This is a great guiding principle for any government. And a better rendering of vision is actually “revelation”. Without revelation (God’s leading and tangible presence in the lives of men) people have no guiding light, nothing outside themselves for whom to love and live. They perish in time!

Your constitution and mine is defined by the health of our soul, as is our country’s health defined by our nation’s soul. Without faith foremost in our lives, and in the life of all we hold dear, hope for change is a pipedream. That’s the way I see it, 222 years later.

Your old soldier trekker,

Jim Meredith