67 Sermon Illustrations on Patriotism

During a visit to the United States a few years ago, a pastor from Nepal told of being thrown into a Nepalese prison for spreading the Gospel. This pastor gave an excellent summary of Christian patriotism.

“Of course I must obey my Lord and spread His Word,” he said. “But even though we are persecuted, we who are Christians in Nepal pride ourselves on being the best citizens our king has. We love our country — but we love our God more.”

Here in the U.S., Christians are sometimes confused about where to draw the line between the demands of the state and the demands of God. Is civil disobedience ever justified? And if so, how do we know?

As I write in my new book, GOD & GOVERNMENT, Scripture makes clear that civil disobedience is justified when government attempts to usurp the role of the Church or our allegiance due only to God. Then the Christian has not just the right but the duty to resist.

The Bible gives a dramatic example of this in the account of three young Jewish exiles who were drafted into the Babylonian civil service.

All citizens of Babylon were required to worship the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, the king. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the young Hebrews, refused. To worship an earthly king would be the ultimate offense against their holy God. So, the three young men were thrown into a blazing furnace — but God miraculously delivered them.

We also have the example of Peter and John, who, when they were ordered to stop preaching about Jesus, refused. “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God,” they said.

Their first allegiance was to Christ’s command to preach the gospel. They could not permit the authority of the government-backed Sanhedrin to usurp the authority of God Himself.

Civil disobedience may also be justified when the state ignores its divinely mandated responsibilities to preserve life and maintain order and justice. The resistance of the German church to Hitler was a clear modern example of this necessity. In the fifties and sixties, this necessary resistance was modeled in our own country by those active in the civil rights movement. It was later modeled by those who took part in Operation Rescue sit-ins at abortion clinics.

Christians need to have a thorough understanding of biblical teachings about civil disobedience. Today, perhaps more than any other time in American history, Christians face attacks on their freedom of conscience. For instance, colleges go to great lengths to silence Christians who speak out against the aggressive, gay agenda. Some states order pharmacists to fill prescriptions for morning after pills — even if the pharmacist has moral objections. Christian adoption agencies are told to allow same-sex couples to adopt — or else.

Christians are to be the best of citizens; Out of our love for God, we live in subjection to governing authorities and we pray for them and respect them. We also love our neighbors and promote justice. But good citizenship requires both discernment and courage — discernment to know when duty calls one to obey or disobey, and courage, as in the case of the latter, to take a stand. But this is never done lightly. Only when, in consultation with other Christians and leaders, we feel obligated to do so.

As that Nepali pastor put it, we love our country. But we love our God more.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Barack Obama’s longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright is a prominent proponent of “Black nationalism” and has made many controversial statements in his sermons about the unrighteousness of America’s conduct.

A sermon Wright gave after the 9/11 attack labels as terrorism America’s past actions against Indians and blacks. He lumps those actions in the same category with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bombing of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi’s home, the bombing of Grenada and the pre-9/11 bombings of Iraq.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards,” Wright said at the time. “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

In an April 25, 2008, interview on PBS’ “Bill Moyers Journal,” Wright told Moyers he was in the New York City area on Sept. 11, 2001, and, from a hotel room, saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center. He also said members of his church lost loved ones during the attacks.

“They came to church wanting to know where is God in this. And so, I had to show them using that Psalm -- Psalm 137 -- how the people [Israelites] who were carried away into slavery were very angry, very bitter,” Wright said. “...And that’s exactly where we [were]. We want revenge. They wanted revenge. God doesn’t want to leave you there, however. God wants redemption. God wants wholeness. And that’s the context, the biblical context I used to try to get people sitting again, in that sanctuary on that Sunday following 9/11, who wanted to know, ‘Where is God in this? What is God saying? What is God saying? Because I want revenge.’”

Moyers also played a lengthy clip from one of Wright’s sermons where he referenced America’s past actions against blacks, including slavery and segregation. In the infamous quote, Wright goes on to say, “The government gives [black Americans] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God d--- America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God d--- America for treating our citizens as less than human. God d--- America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

Wright said that quote, too, was taken out of context.

“When you start confusing God and government, your allegiances to government -- a particular government and not to God -- then you’re in serious trouble because governments fail people,” he said, explaining the sermon. “And governments change. And governments lie. And those [were the] three points of the sermon. And that was the context in which I was illustrating how the governments ... since biblical times, up to our time, changed, how they failed, and how they lie.... [The] governments that wanna kill innocents are not consistent with the will of God. And that you are made in the image of God, you’re not made in the image of any particular government. We have the freedom here in this country to talk about that publicly, whereas some other places, you’re dead if say the wrong thing about your government.”

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Michael Foust is an assistant editor of Baptist Press.

Independence Day, that chaos of flags, fireworks and watermelon, will be a little tentative this unique year. Those who fidget at seeing an American flag in church or hearing the national anthem sung once a year in worship will perhaps be more numerous and fidgety this year.

But I still join those who celebrate America. There are reasons to do so.

First, I’m grateful. Those who founded our country and who kept it through very difficult days have delivered to us a nation that has blessed the world. We are recipients of a nation that many long to join and only a few silly celebrities speak of leaving. I’m grateful for the liberty built into our nation and guarded by its founding documents. We benefit from those liberties each day. I benefit from it in writing this column. Whoever else may not like it, I don’t have to worry about the opinion of those in political power. That’s not true everywhere.

I also admire my country, not because it lives up to its ideals but because it has them.

Those high-minded aspirations are not forgotten but rather arise every time someone believes we are neglecting them to the detriment of our people. Some nations would be worse places if they were all they desire to be. America becomes better when it hews closer to its expressed values.

America is a place of hope because our ideals were drawn out of a mostly Judeo-Christian culture. Where we have repeatedly fallen short of those principles it has been reformers with Bibles in their hands who have clamored loudly for change. Listen to the rhetoric of abolitionists and civil rights activists and hear the biblical references.

But love for America is like my belief in God. I can give rational reasons for it that seem compelling but ultimately I love America (and believe in God) because I do. Others who love other home places don’t convince me as they sing the praises of their own countries. Perhaps people abandon their homes for rational reasons, but we don’t usually embrace our homes because of logic. Having a place you call home -- a place, not just a homestead -- is a gift of God.

Think of Israel, of Jerusalem. I’ve seen it and wouldn’t fight you for the landscape. It’s a harsh place, desert, a place of extremes and turmoil. A casual reading of Psalm 137 leaves me wondering, “Why the passion?” But letting the Hebrew children wander for a generation made them want a home of their own; anyplace sounds better than circling the Sinai. And Jerusalem was much better than the Judean desert. Maybe it’s relative but it’s so much more than that. The Promised Land was given as an imperfect image of the Perfect Land to come. Jerusalem has not been a city of peace for much of its history, but at its best it gives a peek at the heavenly city we will see one day. At its worst it makes us long for New Jerusalem and the return of its King.

So I love America because it is my home. Something would have to compel me to leave rather than convince me to stay. I recognize the meaning of Jerusalem is unique in the world, but I also think the gift of a home place can serve a similar purpose in anyone’s life. I have seen the best side of 10 foreign countries and the worst side of several. I didn’t long to stay in any of them, but I found people there who were happily at home. When people think of heaven they think of a place where they will be perfectly safe, perfectly at rest and perfectly “at home.” They long for “a city not made with hands” (Hebrews 11:10) but the concept of that city starts with the place God gave them.

G.K. Chesterton explores this so well in an essay in his book “Heretics,” critiquing Rudyard Kipling. His contention is that Kipling, a cosmopolitan Englishman, loved England because of her qualities in a similar way that he loves other places because of their qualities. Kipling saw England in passing rather than as the farmer hoeing his potato field saw it. The farmer saw England as his world and the globetrotting writer saw it as an admirable place in the world. Kipling was to Chesterton “the philanderer of the nations,” a man who loved something about many countries with a “because of” love but who never knew that first love, the “regardless” love.

Maybe you see the deeper point. Our country is troubled, and troubling -- no matter how it compares to another place. But it is the place from which I see the whole world. It is the place that taught me to love a home place. And America teaches me, at its best and worst, to long for the perfect country that will be my home forever.

America is fundamentally distinct from all other countries in its founding, in its national life, and in the values, rights and privileges it confers upon its citizens. In other words, America is exceptional. And if it is exceptional in its domestic character, in what it offers to immigrants in search of a better life, then it would follow that America is exceptional in what it has to offer to the global community.

America is not an ethnicity or mere geography, but a creed, a set of first principles to which we pledge allegiance -- freedom, human dignity, self-government, and equality. Anyone who pledges allegiance to these values can consider himself or herself an “American.”

America has been blessed by God in unique ways -- we are not just another country, but neither are we God’s special people. I do not believe that America is God’s chosen nation. God established one chosen nation and people: the Jews. We are not the new Israel. We cannot assume “God is on our side.” We are not God’s gift to the world.

America does not have a special claim on God. Millions of Americans do, however, believe God has a special claim on them -- and their country.

The concept of American “exceptionalism” was first popularized in the early 19th century by Alexis de Tocqueville, although the idea was hardly invented by him. The roots of this view go back to the beginnings of Puritan settlements -- how else do you explain the Puritan understanding of a “shining city on a hill” to light the way for the Old World? Or Francis Scott Key’s imagery of “the heav’n rescued land” in our national anthem, which he wrote in 1814 after he saw the Stars and Stripes still waving over Fort McHenry after a night of fierce bombardment from British ships?

American exceptionalism is the understanding that America is a unique nation with a unique sense of purpose that started with the nation’s settlement and has since morphed through various meanings, all of them centered on the observation that America is distinct from other countries in the world -- in its founding, in its government, in its social and economic structures, and in its religious and cultural character.

America has been blessed in manifold ways. When you look at our resources, our protection by two oceans, our standard of living, can you argue that America has not been uniquely and providentially blessed? The natural resources that lie within the confines of our borders are without parallel anywhere in the world: not just rich, arable land, but vast resources of iron, coal and oil under the ground. We didn’t put them there; we were just led to the place where they were.

We have had the opportunity to enjoy them and to benefit people around the world with them. Perhaps the most fertile land on the planet is our Great Plains.

We have become the breadbasket for the world. We feed much of the world’s population, in part because we are good farmers, but also because we believe in private ownership of land and property. Can you name a nation that in any way can claim to have been the recipient of God’s unearned blessings to the measure that we have been?

The blessings are not just material, however. It is remarkable that the one generation that produced our Founding Fathers emerged and put together the Constitution that has served us so well for more than two centuries and has brought unparalleled freedom for an unparalleled number of people -- unequaled by any other country in the world.

We enjoy freedoms that most of us have not risked our lives to establish, protect or preserve. All of us, unless we are immigrants to this country, have by the providence of birth been bequeathed an incredible legacy. Over the last two and a half centuries, there has been no other country in the world within which such a high percentage of the population has had the guaranteed freedoms we possess: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of assembly. We have guaranteed freedoms in our Constitution that even Canadians and Britons don’t have.

There was either a fortuitous or a providential set of circumstances in the development and rise of this nation. Since I’m a Christian, I believe in providence more than fortune. I believe that it was a uniquely providential set of circumstances that allowed the flourishing of this triumph of freedom and the dignity of human beings. It certainly didn’t happen that way in the French Revolution, and I believe it is no coincidence that the philosophy and convictions fueling that revolution were not based on a transcendent divine authority. They were based in human reason (or what the revolutionaries mistook for reason) alone, and the upheaval quickly degenerated into a maelstrom of chaos, violence and power struggles.

The Founding Fathers of the American Revolution, by contrast, affirmed that human rights are not mere human constructions, but are unalienable rights conferred by God.

Government could not create those rights; all it could do was recognize, support and protect them. This idea of divinely ordained rights had not taken root anywhere else in the world. It was a new and unique concept.

“Blessings,” by definition, are undeserved. From the richness of our undeserved legacy comes obligation. If we have been given much, we are obligated to give much to others. If we love our neighbors as ourselves, we will seek not only to preserve and protect our liberties, but to assist others in their efforts to attain these same liberties for themselves.

American exceptionalism is not a delusion of national grandiosity. American exceptionalism is not a doctrine of pride and privilege. It is a belief that God has blessed this nation in amazing ways, and those blessings invoke a reciprocal obligation and responsibility to seek to share, but not impose, the blessings of freedom and democracy with others around the world.

Let’s all pause this Fourth of July weekend to give praise and gratitude to our Heavenly Father for the manifold blessings of being an American and to say thank you to all those who have sacrificed to protect and defend those precious liberties.

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Richard Land is president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Things weren’t going well in 1893. The country had settled into a depression that put one in five Americans out of work. Still, Katharine Lee Bates, a young English teacher who had taken a summer teaching job in Colorado, scanned the horizon and saw hope. Her train ride from Massachusetts had passed through enormous wheat fields in Kansas. Later in the summer she had ridden a donkey to the summit of Pikes Peak. She was only on the top for 30 minutes, but she later remarked, “It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind.”

After she returned to her hotel room that night, she remarked to friends that countries such as England had failed because, while they may have been “great,” they had not been “good.” She added that “unless we are willing to crown our greatness with goodness, and our bounty with brotherhood, our beloved America may go the same way.”

Based on her experiences on that trip, she wrote a poem that two years later was published in a church newspaper for their 4th of July edition. They paid her $5.

Churches loved the poem and soon it was put to music. The most popular tune, and the one we use today, was written by Samuel Ward, a church organist living in Newark, New Jersey. He wrote it on the cuff of a friend’s shirt.

By 1926 a strong push was made to adopt the hymn as the national anthem of the United States but President Hoover chose the “Star-Spangled Banner” instead. Many still prefer “America the Beautiful” and think it is an expression of patriotism at its finest. One writer has said it conveys an attitude of appreciation and gratitude for the nation’s extraordinary physical beauty and abundance, without being triumphalistic.

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Adapted from these articles:

“America The Beautiful: The “Almost” National Anthem of the United States,”

“America the Beautiful,” The Library of Congress: Performing Arts Encyclopedia,

“Her Hymn Endures,” Nick Charles, People magazine,

Nationalism becomes idolatry whenever love of nation devolves into an excessive or uncritical devotion, is confused with the Kingdom of God, justifies evil, or engages in a partiality that treats citizens of other nations as less worthy of love or justice or charity.

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Richard John Neuhaus, founder of the journal on religion and public life First Things, once wrote, “When I meet God, I expect to meet him as an American.” The line got him in a good bit of trouble back then, but today he’d almost certainly be accused of being a “Christian nationalist.” Nationalism of any stripe has gotten a bad name recently, but especially so-called Christian nationalism. How should Christians think about nations and national loyalty?

The first use of the Hebrew word for “nation” appears in Genesis 10, in a listing of nations that descended from Noah’s sons. It’s notable that this comes before the Tower of Babel, recorded in Genesis 11, where God created more nations by confusing the languages and scattering people across the Earth. Nations, it seems, were part of God’s plan for humanity before the rebellion at Babel. And, even in that story, the dividing into tongues and scattering of the people is described more as an act of mercy than of judgment, to prevent humans from doing all that was possible as one people.

Then in Genesis 12, God tells Abram that his descendants would become a great nation, and that, through them, all the nations of the world would be blessed. The Old Testament frequently refers to the Jewish people as a nation, while also using the same word to describe the other kingdoms and empires around them.

In the New Testament, ethne, the Greek word for “nation,” most famously appears in Jesus’ instructions to make disciples “of all nations,” which is a fulfillment of God’s original promise to Abraham.

Also interesting is that in the New Testament, language about nations seems to exclude “empire.” Though ethne can be translated either as “people group” or “nation,” the two are related. Historically, the word “nation” referred to a relatively homogenous group, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically. Each kingdom of the ancient world mostly consisted of people of a single nation. Thus, ethne can refer to a people group within an empire, but not to empires themselves because they contain multiple nations.

Nations also seem to be present after the Second Coming of Christ, according to biblical descriptions. For example, Micah 4:2 says:

“Many nations shall come, and say:

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

    to the house of the God of Jacob,

that he may teach us his ways

    and that we may walk in his paths.’

For out of Zion shall go forth the law,

    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”

And in Revelation 21:24, we are told that “by the light [of God and of the Lamb] will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it [the New Jerusalem].” So, it seems that something of the nations will survive into eternity.

Of course, because human beings are fallen, everything humans build is susceptible to sin, including nations. Just as sins characterize our lives as individuals, so also can certain sins dominate nations, corrupting their cultures. And, just as we must be cleansed of sin to enter the Kingdom, so must nations be cleansed from sins if they have any place in the New Heavens and New Earth.

A fascinating illustration of this is found in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Their high views of ancient northern European culture show up in their stories of Narnia and Middle Earth. However, though they believed virtue could be found, they also recognized the evils of Norse paganism. Thus, they argued for a recovery of “northernness,” cleansed of its paganism and Christianized by the Gospel.

Exactly what the cleansing of nations entails isn’t clear, but the result is beautifully described in Revelation 7, where “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” will join together in worshipping the Lamb.

This passage confirms that, at least to some degree, our nationality will accompany us into eternity. Rather than homogenizing us, God’s Kingdom will be a glorious mosaic of people of different races, ethnicities, and nations. This makes sense given that God delighted in the diversity of His creation.

In other words, according to these texts, when Father Neuhaus died in 2009, he did, in fact, meet God as an American.

Of course, all good loves, including love of spouse, child, family, community, or culture, can be disordered and even idolatrous. Nationalism becomes idolatry whenever love of nation devolves into an excessive or uncritical devotion, is confused with the Kingdom of God, justifies evil, or engages in a partiality that treats citizens of other nations as less worthy of love or justice or charity. However, the idea that nations should be defined, self-governing, and the immediate object of Christian stewardship is not idolatry.

Another way to say this is that Christians are called to be good stewards of the nations they are in. Our nations are, after all, the most obvious aspect of the time and place in which God has placed us.

At the same time, great harm is done whenever Christians attempt to build empires. The reason is simple: Jesus is the only one who rules over all nations, and no one on earth has the right to usurp His authority.

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Copyright (c) 2022 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

High atop the Pentagon, a few yards from the jet-sized hole in the wall, workmen carefully unfurled a huge American flag. As they secured the Stars and Stripes to the building, one of them lifted his hand in a quiet salute.

A photographer captured the moment. The picture that landed on the front page of newspapers across the country seems to symbolize something that has suddenly become deeply important to Americans: a sense of national unity.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on our country, Americans have crowded into churches. My own church was packed again this week. Christians have reached out to comfort the grief-stricken and are telling our leaders what the church says about the just use of military force.

But what's missing in the flurry of flag-waving and comfort-giving is something that should be the first business of the church: Calling ourselves, and then the nation, to repentance. Christians of the past knew that repentance and faith are a package. The Christian life is a life of returning, of going back to the cross daily in repentance and faith.

For years, many of us have half-jokingly said that if God doesn't bring judgment on America soon, he'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. I approach this subject gingerly because it is easy to be misunderstood. But I think we do have to try to discern God's purpose in the events that have shaken the whole world.

One prominent leader publicly blamed homosexuals and abortionists for bringing God's judgment on America. But we must be careful when we draw conclusions like this. Our job is to bring Americans together so we can teach and lead them. Besides, when it comes to judgment, we need to look a little closer to home.

For judgment always begins with God's people. For example, in the Old Testament, we read that before God appointed him to lead, Nehemiah repented for his sins and the sins of God's people. Later he led the people -- recently returned from exile in Persia -- in a time of corporate confession and repentance.

Jesus himself was confronted by people wanting to know why bad things happen to good people -- people who'd been killed in the Temple or crushed by a falling tower. Jesus did not try to give them some elaborate explanation. Instead, he just said to them, "Repent, or you too will perish." We should understand repentance as Martin Luther did -- central to life with Christ.

Let's say, hypothetically, that the attacks were God's judgment. Not that he caused them -- he doesn't cause evil -- but he may use such events for his purposes. What will then save us is not the Marines, cruise missiles, satellites, or smart bombs; the only thing that will save us is repentance and faith.

If I am correct in thinking God may be using these events to wake up America, we must face a sobering fact: We will not prevail against terrorism no matter how good our armed forces are. We will prevail only if God in his mercy decides to forgive us, heal our land, and give America another chance.

So, yes -- keep those flags waving, and continue to comfort those who mourn. But if we are correctly reading the signs of the times, by far the most important thing we should be doing is dropping to our knees in prayer and begging God's forgiveness. God is not calling us to finger pointing, but to repentance -- a radical changing of our ways in the light of the Cross.

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Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Thomas Paine’s chief contribution to the conduct of the Revolutionary War was a series of dispatches known as “The American Crisis,” and printed in newspapers throughout the states. He wrote the first of them by the light of a campfire during Washington’s desperate retreat across New Jersey, in December, 1776.

Getting ready to cross the frozen Delaware River – at night, in a blizzard – to launch a surprise attack on Trenton, Washington ordered Paine’s words read to his exhausted, frostbitten troops:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

The next morning, the Continentals fought to a stunning, pivotal victory.

I'd never heard of Pat Tillman before he joined the Army two years ago.

Not being a big football fan, I had no idea that he played for the Arizona Cardinals. But the minute the story broke about his enlisting and volunteering to be a Ranger, I knew Pat Tillman because I was, at one time, just like Pat Tillman. I, too, was an Army Ranger.

Like so many others, I felt a certain amount of shock when his death was announced last week. I read with a great deal of personal interest all of the stories that appeared. I knew Pat Tillman because I knew guys just like him. Guys with that certain esprit de corps, that do-anything, go-anywhere attitude. You could see it in their eyes. It wasn't pride and it wasn't arrogance. But it wasn't far from it. It's that look that comes when you know that you're ready to take what the world throws at you. Pat Tillman had that look.

Tillman was, in the football arena, the little engine that could, the little guy that somehow made it big. When he walked away from it all for the life of an Army Ranger, the media couldn't understand why a young man in his professional prime would give up millions of dollars. Some thought him an idealist, a go- getter with a never-say-die attitude. Others heard him say that he wanted to do something for his country but they really didn't understand. They never will. Not until they walk a mile in his shoes.

The same response came recently when Southern Baptist personnel were slain in Iraq. And before that in Yemen and in the Philippines. The media questioned the missionaries' right to be in these foreign lands. They questioned their dedication to a cause that insists that it offers the only correct answer to life's ultimate questions. While some acknowledged the great sacrifice of these soldiers of the cross, the media for the most part didn't understand. They never will. Not until they take up a cross and follow Jesus.

Pat Tillman can teach us a thing or two about being an American. He was a hero. Not because he once played football for millions of dollars. Not because he jumped out of airplanes for thousands. Not even because he died in the line of duty, making the ultimate sacrifice. He was a hero because he was willing to do what so many can't. He was a hero because he knew the Ranger creed and lived it:

-- Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor and high esprit de corps of the Rangers.

-- Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster and fight harder than any other soldier.

-- Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, 100 percent and then some.

-- Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well- trained soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.

-- Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.

-- Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.

Pat Tillman was a hero because he heard the call to duty and answered.

In the end, Pat Tillman died for his country, going where millions of others couldn't go.

So, too, will many of us die in the name of Christ. We have been given our marching orders: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19). We know the cost: “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it” (Matt 10:39).

Pat Tillman proudly wore the beret of an Army Ranger, carrying his nation's colors into battle, willing to die for the cause. Are you carrying the cross of Christ and the sword of truth? Or have we learned nothing from those who've gone before us?

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[Original illustration here was a duplicate in HolwickID 25837-26027]