Acts 17:24-28 New International Version
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
The commercialism of selling toys aside, it is endearing when a child chooses to imitate a parent by pretending to do grown-up tasks with various tools. One aspect of such scenarios to consider is that some children will indeed grow up to do what their parent did, in much the same way. A boy who pretends to build things with his plastic tool set me actually become a contractor just like his dad.
Where 'Christian' Nationalism goes horribly wrong is when those who follow it seek to apply this idea to imitating God. Are we to imitate God's morality? Absolutely, we are commanded to be like-Christ in our usage of the Fruit of the Spirit. It actually isn't optional, we must be like Jesus if we are to truly be his disciples. But that's where our imitation ends. We are NOT called to imitate God by judging others, nor are we called to imitate God's authority or dominion over others. God is God, we are not. We will never be a god in any way, shape, or form.
God, and God alone, exercises divine authority as both our Creator and the Judge of the living and the dead. These qualities belong to God, not us. In reality, God doesn't need our help in these matters, at all. God has called us to be servants, not rulers, to offer our own lives as living sacrifices. In this we imitate the self-sacrificial example of Jesus Christ. The problem is, some folks would much rather imitate God upon-his-throne than Jesus stooping to wash his disciples' feet. So rather than serving, they seek to accumulate power. Contrary to the flattery we feel when our kids want to pretend to do our job, God doesn't find this amusing.
Let's let God be God and focus our passion on the servant's role that has been placed before us.
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