A Kingdom View of Memorial Day: As I’ve grown older and walked deeper with Jesus in the kingdom of God, I’ve started to wrestle more with the meaning of Memorial Day from a Christian perspective.

I don’t struggle with the acknowledgment—or even the occasional glorification—of war that often surfaces on Memorial Day. In a fallen world, Christians recognize that war sometimes becomes necessary. When that happens, people inevitably cross moral and spiritual boundaries. That doesn’t surprise me anymore.

What really unsettles my heart is the wave of Christian nationalism Memorial Day often stirs, especially within Evangelical churches. I find myself wondering how my brothers and sisters in Christ from other nations, who live here in the U.S., feel when they see this. More importantly, I find myself asking: What does the Lord think of all this?

What has bothered me more is the hyper nationalism Memorial Day seems to inspire, particularly in Evangelical Christians.

I wonder what my foreign brothers and sisters living here think when they witness it? I wonder what the Lord thinks.

Anytime we are tempted to elevate cause or country over the Kingdom we should be concerned. The savior of the world is not the United States of America but King Jesus, and the answer to the world’s problems is not democracy or a republican form of government but the Gospel.

Instead we should consider the Lord’s instructions to those living in exile in Jerusalem:

“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.”

Jeremiah 29:7.

While it may not be perfectly analogous, in a sense, until the kingdom of God fully manifests on earth we are all living in exile. The Lord’s instruction strikes a good balance between apathy and jingoism.

We should seek the welfare of the city in which we find ourselves, and pray for it, but we should recognize that our identity does not arise out of the country in which we live but the kingdom of God. It is that kingdom that will prevail on the earth, not the U.S.A. GS