Citizenship Day

When I was a child, even in a very poor rural school, we had citizenship clubs, and “citizenship day”, on which the outstanding student in each grade received a citizenship medal (I always received the outstanding citizenship medal). Later in life, the Woodman of the World, a fraternal group, gave a county citizenship medal. I still have that medal, along with my military medals in a frame. In another commentary, I have spoken about my being the North Carolina Young Man of the Year. Citizenship, like living the Christian life, is a dual responsibility, you cannot be one and not the other. Christianity compels you to be a good citizen, and I have never known a “real Christian” who is not a good citizen. September 17th, citizenship day, was once called “constitution day”.

Our country is sick today because we have so many sick citizens, sick citizens who have forgotten the magnificence of their constitution. Sick citizens because they have forgotten the sovereignty of the Bible. The system is sick because law enforcement is sick, judiciary is sick. The only salvation for America, the American way of life as dreamed by our founding fathers, is to return to the instructions found in God's Holy Word. The depths and breadths afforded every citizen by the promises of the Constitution. Once, in a group of disabled citizens, a blind man stepped on my foot. He apologized and said, “you know I am blind”. I said, “yes, only the blind know things as they are, and only we can be magnanimous in forgiving others who should know.”

James Cagney, famed actor, said, “there are only three types of people: those who can count, and those who cannot count.” I have experienced one man who told me he was sure that he was going to hell. Most people, regardless of their lives here on earth, think they are going to heaven, and for some strange reason, so does their family. The man told me he was so sure he was going to hell because he could not stand “religious people.”

Only those who have been to war know the horrors of war, and want to escape war. Only those who have lived a life of paganism should want to escape paganism. Even before Christ, there was slavery in the Greco-Roman empires. The first African slaves were taken to Portugal around 1425, but there were centuries of slavery before that: slaves pulling the oars of ancient ships, slaves working the mines of ancient rulers, slave girls and women, forced prostitutes. For centuries, Christians like Wilberforce of England have tried to erase slavery from the face of the earth. Yet, even in the 21st century, like the selling of children, pornography and drug addiction, there is more slavery in the world than ever before. And, even in America, we vote for slavery, slaves to increasing taxation, slaves to a complete loss of privacy, slaves to increased government controls.

On this Citizenship Day, which also happens to be my eightieth birthday, I want to devote the rest of my life, in fervent prayer, for a new day of citizenship in America. Realizing that when American loses the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear, that the rest of the world becomes just one big cauldron of enslavement. Because, since America's founding, America has been the one nation on Earth to which people all over the earth have found hope in helping them find freedom, and citizenship. God, in his tender mercy, in his love for every person, from conception to the grave, instills the desire for citizenship, a citizen of the earth.