May God bless the United States of America 🇺🇸

If you’d asked me a year ago about my relationship to that phrase, I’d have said it felt hollow – a line politicians recite at the end of their speeches. I wasn’t yet connected to the depth underneath, though it was quietly yet surely cultivating inside me.

Like seeds from God do.

The US is a fascinating country – one of the first, perhaps the only, whose very fabric is built on values rather than on unchangeable traits of a people. Take Germany, for instance: even its name points back to Germanness. That doesn’t mean it can’t be inclusive of non-Germans, but when things get rough, the anchor is still blood and soil.

By contrast, in America the anchor is a set of founding values. Anyone who has worked in startups, in corporate spaces, or studied practices like Nonviolent Communication knows this truth: the values of a culture are its glue. They are what you reach for when conflict comes, the pattern you return to, the thing you’ve chosen and cultivated together. Even the name you give something is a vessel for its values.

The United States of America is, at its heart, an experiment – an audacious attempt to hold unity among sovereign states through a shared commitment to values.

And it’s founded on values – values drawn from Christ, from Christianity. They’re woven into the nation’s fabric, which is why, in a very real sense, the United States is a Christian nation, whether its citizens accept or deny it. Nowhere else is God-given free will so fully honored: even the freedom to fall short, to “sin,” is fiercely protected on the supposedly godless Left.

God created us in His image and entrusted us with the power to choose. One of the most beautiful verses in Scripture is Jesus’ own description of how He comes into a life, inviting us to open the door to Him.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” Revelation 3:20

The sacredness of free will is reflected in the right to free speech, presently upheld fiercely on the Right in the US, and so courageously demonstrated by Charlie Kirk. The flavor of free speech that Kirk demonstrated was not the one that retreats into gossipy bubbles or collapses into silence but which engages the other, maintaining connection, sometimes sparky yes, yet connection all the same.

Across much of the world, free speech isn’t sanctified this way. People mock American “conspiracy theorists” without realizing how much agency lies in the freedom to speak even the absurd – and in the self-reflection that freedom invites. It’s a beautiful journey to notice which parts of yourself come through in your speaking – the layers of introspection and self-reflection that arise when you allow your thoughts to be voiced and truly heard. That freedom is such a gift, and when people mock the extremes it can produce, they don’t see what they’re cutting themselves off from.

Even Douglas Murray, one of the sharpest right-wing intellectuals in the UK – arguably the birthplace of many American ideals – wrestles to grasp this uniquely American privilege, as he dawdles about credentialed expertise in that famously heated segment on the JRE podcast.

In order to truly sanctify the right to free speech, you must also uphold the right to bear arms. Too often that gets reduced to debates about gun control and shootings, but the right to bear arms is far more than weapons – it is the right to fight for what you believe in, so that you can, by your own free will, choose to lay those arms down. You cannot forgive, pray for the collective, or surrender violence from a place of strength if you never believed you had the right to defend yourself in the first place. If you see yourself as weak, if you doubt your strength, you can’t freely choose to lay down your arms.

It’s such a beautiful experiment, this nation – an audacious attempt to uphold the free will of everyone who lives here. Of course it isn’t perfect, but it truly tries, and that striving itself is rare. Friction is inevitable, and from the fruits of that friction comes creativity – extraordinary creativity. Whether someone mocks the US or talks about leaving it, they still benefit from what springs out of that tension.

Right now the struggle feels intense. The United States has become a place where the spiritual battle between good and evil is palpable. There is a real duality in the spiritual realm, even though all was created by One, and the US has become a hotbed where that war plays out. To live in this landscape is to be courageous: to stand firm in faith, to speak convictions freely, and to stay connected.

On that path, you will eventually meet the parts of yourself bound to the body of flesh – the part that fears death because it is subject to death. Yet you yourself are not subject to death. Through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ – a victory over the body of flesh – we are shown a way to triumph over death without dissociating from our embodied lives. We can be in the world without being of it. Therein lies true spiritual courage.

At times it almost feels inevitable to embrace martyrdom in this era, and I wonder where one goes after such martyrdom. History holds many examples of people willing to give up their embodied lives to speak boldly, and we don’t know their destination. We each have theories, but no certainty. To me, this mystery calls for courage in the face of the unknown. The only way to meet the unknown is with courage. And patience is born from that courageous relationship with the unknown.

Today I pray that God continues to bless this brave nation, covering its flaws with freely flowing grace. May every person here rise in courageous love – and may that love spread to all nations.

May God bless the United States of America 🇺🇸✝️