America as a continent stretches from the northernmost tip of Alaska to the southernmost tip of the Peruvian peninsula. Yet when we (the citizenry of the United States) utter the phrase God Bless America, we are not talking about the land that is America. We are talking about the land mass that falls within the boundaries of the United States.

In the book of James, we learn that we have not because we ask not – and when we ask, we ask amiss. (Chapter 4:8-9 – paraphrased) “Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” (James 4:8 & 9). My God, what a testimony to the people of this great nation. There are sixty-six books in the Holy Bible, and most of them talk about the Godhead – which we deftly refer to as the Holy Trinity, God the father, Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus as God manifested in the flesh, and the coming of the Holy Spirit – but few talk to us in the way that James has. Whereas Paul was concerned about the Hebrews not being ready for meat and still feasting on milk, James is putting truth on our plates and telling us that if we want life, and want it in abundance, we have no choice but to learn to chew the truth carefully and swallow it gently – “For as the body without food is dead, so faith without works is dead.” (James 2:26)

Jesus said that a double minded person is unstable in all his ways. Therefore, do not let a double-minded man think he will receive anything from God.

Sadly, we ARE a double- minded nation and a “stiff-necked” people. We preach equality, but we practice inequality. We talk about unity, and we uphold segregation and racial disharmony. Jesus rightly asked, “How can you say that you love God whom you have not seen, and yet you despise your brother whom you have seen?”   We are no better than the rich man who when he expected a bountiful harvest decided to go out and tear down his old barn that he thought was too small and “build a bigger barn.”

I once heard a speaker deliver a message at a business seminar which he entitled, “Pigs don’t know pig stink.” Why is that? They are familiar with the scent by virtue of being naturally immersed in it. Through the years, I have used that phrase to keep me walking in a relatively straight line along the tightrope of pride and prejudice. Do not become puffed up with yourself. (That’s scriptural) Remember, pride goeth before a fall, (and so is that) and a haughty spirit is the devil’s reward (my observation). The Constitution of the United States clearly states that “All men are created equal” and endowed with “inalienable rights,” but it took another how many more years and amendments to give “all men” the right to be recognized as a person, get the right to vote in this country, ride in the front of the bus, and be educated in the same schools as their narrow-minded oppressors?

Talk about double standards. We tell others “Give us your tired, your hungry, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” and then we commit them to sleeping in foxholes on our nations farms, sleeping in the streets in major cities, and eating at soup kitchens and out of garbage cans. We open the door to immigration, and we banish our Native American Indians to live on reservations.   We fight for animal rights, the right to bear arms, and the rights for women to abort babies – knowing that they can be eventually given up for adoption or may even grow up to find the cure for AIDS, the right to public live “Alternative lifestyles,” and a host of other rights, way too numerous to mention.  Lord, what am I missing here? How confused are we in our thinking? We decry the cruel and inhumane treatment of animals, while sentencing our vagrant and wayward citizens to death by electrocution. We protect wildlife and rainforests, and destroy human offspring.   It is not the terrorists who are bringing America to the state of despondency. It is all that sin that is in the camp and the hypocrisy that still prevails. Is it a wonder why America is failing? I think not. We are house that is divided, and Jesus tells us that “…if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided among itself shall not stand.” (Mark 3:24 & 25)

We all know that the Lord works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. We have often heard that God is a just God – and He is no respecter of persons, so it makes one wonder about all the crime and poverty that permeates the societies in which we live and our willingness to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the cry of our less fortunate brothers and sisters.   As a child, I spent eight years of my life growing up in what I still deem a very decrepit island in the Caribbean. That is where I learned a very valuable lesson, I came to understand that one man’s poverty is another man’s riches, or as my mother would put it “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure, and what’s death to the cow is just a day’s work for the butcher.”   That is the premise behind another lesson I learned as an adult residing in the United States, there can be no wealth if there is no poverty – and vice versa. Now I have finally realized the meaning behind both of these phrases, “Pig don’t know pigs stink.” However, the Bible puts it oh so much more eloquently, than we ever could, “Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes . . .” (Proverbs 3:3-7). The remainder of verse seven concludes as thus, “fear the Lord, and depart from evil,” and for that we all need the wisdom of God, because only then will we be able to discern that which is evil from that which is good.  Therefore, if we are to bring about change in any society, we have to embrace the people by identifying the intrinsic values of their culture and use that knowledge as a rite of passage to bridge the gap between their heritage and ours. We cannot just walk through their doorways and usher them into the corners of their homes and tell them that they are wrong for being the people they are. We have to recognize them in the context of their environment and invite them into our hearts and minds, before we can affect them culturally.

When we look at each other from God’s perspective, then we can understand why each of us is who and where we are in this life -It reminds me of a song from the motion picture, The Prince of Egypt. I don’t know the title, but I remember the message – A piece of thread cannot see how it fits into the tapestry to create a pattern, and we cannot see how each of us mesh together to form the pattern of God’s dominion, except that we look at life through heaven’s eyes. That is what we need to do, see each other “through heaven’s eyes,” and recognize that together we “form the pattern of God’s dominion.”