God’s Country

By Bobby Neal Winters

It is fitting, I suppose, that Christianity and patriotism often create a cruciform tension in our hearts.  Music is a medicine for the pain that is created by this tension.  I chose the word medicine carefully, but I chose it from the point of view of someone who equated medicine with merthiolate in his formative years.  Those of you of a certain age require no explanation.  For you young folks, let me explain: It burns.

I remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis back in 1980.  Perhaps the best piece of music to come out of that was the song “In America” by the Charlie Daniels band.  I don’t know that it’s aged well. It is jingoistic and crude; it is narrowly focused and parochial.  But it can reach down and grab you in your redneck gut.

Other songs of this same stripe are “I’m Proud to Be an American” by Lee Greenwood and “The Angry American (Courtesy the Red, White, and Blue)” by Toby Keith.  There has yet to be a time when I’ve heard Greenwood’s song when a tear hasn’t welled-up in my eye.  Greenwood doesn’t squeeze your heartstrings, he squeezes your tear ducts directly.

Toby Keith (a fellow Okie) doesn’t go after your heart or your tear ducts as much as your adrenal glands. You can--without any effort yourself--become angry during the course of this song. I will become aware of myself during the course of this song and find that my jaw is set: I am ready to go to war. It affects me that strongly on the emotional level.

In each of these, the music grabs your emotions.  They tie love of God and love of America together. They present an if you are not for us, you are against us picture.  It’s simple; it’s strident; it’s easy to just follow along.  

And this is all the more true because the United State of America is a great country.  Even now, I am still an American Exceptionalist. I do believe we, the United States, are the last best hope on Earth. 

But self-interest too narrowly focused leads to a fall.

We are living in a country now that is divided blue versus red right down the middle with a purple line of indeterminate thickness trying valiantly to keep it all together.  How long can it succeed?

We can contrast these songs with a hymn that can either be called “This is My Song” or “O God of all the Nations.”  Intellectually, it hits the right notes. I read it silently, and I don’t find much, if anything, to quibble with.  The music is a nice tune too.

But whenever I hear the introduction being played, I find myself involuntarily breathing a heavy sigh. It might be because it is often played on the Sunday nearest the 4th of July as a substitute for something more directly patriotic like “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” or “Our Country ‘Tis of Thee.”  

I know pastors are often walking a tightrope between two camps who have different interpretations of the separation of church and state, so this is not meant as a criticism of them. I mean this as an observation of my own emotions and my own inner divide.

The God I believe in is a God of all peoples, and not just the United States. But within that reality, we don’t simply surrender our existence. 

The existence of a group within a whole creates cruciform tension.  I am part of a family, but I am also me.  I am but one of God’s children, but I am myself too.

A song I’ve found as a medicine that doesn’t sting and helps to to integrate all of these threads is “God’s Country” sung by Blake Shelton with words and music by Devin Dawson, Jordan Schmidt, and Michael Hardy.

Shelton is not only an Okie, but he’s an Okie from my neck of the woods.  We grew up in the same county, separated in time by 14 years.  He sings of us as being from God’s country, growing up from the soil.  We are natives of God’s county.

The message is positive. There is no need to put down anyone else to assert that you are a child of God.  It is the song of one who feels blessed, who has a special relationship to God, but who does not seek authority over others. The song is rooted in Nature, in dirt and water.

It strikes a balance: The music carries your emotions, but the lyric stands on its own as poetry.

While there are a few references that particularize it to the United State--indeed the southern United States--it is broad enough that it could be sung by anyone, anywhere with only minor adjustments.

Thanks, Blake and company.  You done good.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.