“Nations.”

H,

There is this general and dangerous stroke used to paint everything with
God.  It makes God petty, partisan, and
political. They are actually none of these things. We see nations as countries,
God sees nations as people. Each person, each individual is a nation by herself
or himself.  The concern of the divine is
that we are all aware and living out our worth in the most joyous way possible.
Endless delight is what God is calling us to.

This does not mean the nation-state does not exist. Delusion is not a
fruit of the spirit. We live within the context of countries with political
boundaries and identities. These are real things we come up against in birth certificates,
passports, civil rights, laws, and all the facets of our modern life as is
presently constructed. We cannot deny this. The position we must take is that
these things only serve to help or hinder the individual. The quest is still
for the human soul. The idea is still to take every single human being as vital
to the purposes and plans of God.

This is how we must look at policy, politics, and governance.  There are things that can help all of us
grow: education, a sense of community, human rights, economic opportunity, justice,
and a social safety net that is progressive and not retrogressive. There are
also things that do not help at all: racism, ethnicism, unfair economic systems,
lack of social services, lack of basic human freedoms and closed political systems.
When we are to decide what is the best way to approach these flawed systems of
present earth, we must look to systems that make all of us better nations
within this context. They may not save the soul, but they make it more likely to
look toward the light than the dark. They may not fulfil the heart but, even in
their failure, they make us look for the eternity in everything.