Flag and Cross

Does no one understand that you can't stand for the flag and kneel for the cross at the same time?

If we assume (for the sake of argument this dumb pairing that adorns hats, t-shirts, car bumpers etc.) - then I suggest we put it to them and turn their boast into a dilemma. You cannot have it both ways. The two kingdoms are antithetical with different goals and values.

We of course pray for rulers and show respect for them (submitting to Providence) but we don't participate in idolatry. We don't bow to the image of Nebuchadnezzar - which in this culture is the flag. The Early Church knew not to bow to or venerate the standards of the Roman legion. You can be certain they did not place them up front in their meetings either!

And we do not genuflect before the symbol of the cross. We're not told to make or employ crosses and what is now taken for granted was unknown to the Early Church. Crosses crept in early but the cross everyone is familiar with today did not appear until at least a couple of centuries after the apostles. At the time of the Reformation, many of the Calvinists dispensed with it altogether - not the theology of the cross and its call but the use of the symbol as it became a stumbling-block and occasion for idolatry. Like Nehushtan it was doing more harm than good. But obviously this did not last and the cross is now ubiquitous in Protestant and Reformed churches. And no one can turn into a cheap consumer neon trinket like the Evangelicals.

Of course as I take in these flags, shirts, and stickers, the thing that is increasingly troubling to me is the fact that I'll see them in conjunction with other filthy and base sayings - which declare in rather stark terms that the person is not actually a Christian. What a shame that the Church of our day allows this (and tacitly approves it) - allowing these self-deceived people to continue on thinking they're right with God, that they're part of His flock - because they're Americans. Let's be clear for a lot of these people the cross is just sentimentalism along with mom and apple pie as they saying goes. Their Christianity is akin to that of Trump... nothing more than lip service. A faith that is no faith, a vain and empty profession.