“Dear God, I am an American. What are you?” That’s what one small child wrote in her letter to God. Another asked, “Who draws the lines around the countries?” Those are fairly simple questions, but they cut to the complexities of a world order that is still being driven by some old nationalisms. Mark Twain once noted that “Man is the only patriot. Sets himself within the lines of his own country and hires assassins at a great price to protect those lines. We have done this so that there is not an acre of earth left that is in the rightful possession of its owner.”
While the originals of the species might have lacked for creature comforts at the dawn of civilization, they must have enjoyed the peace and quiet. No one had bothered to create an enemy. Between their flat-earth existence and our society that looks back on the planet earth from a space shuttle, something went haywire. Someone started drawing those lines around the countries, and countries started fighting for more than their fair share of turf. Territories were staked out, countries emerged, governments were established, and weapons were invented to protect us from — of all things — each other. We have met the enemy, and they are us.
The new world order is built upon the precarious foundations of old world concepts where a little competition never hurt anyone and a little war every now and then was a necessary evil to prove that some of us at least could be kings of the hills by virtue of who might happen to have the bigger bomb this year. That old order seems to be fading fast these days, and the futility of war grows more apparent. If we learned anything from all the intervening wars since, we have understood once again that wars still cause more problems than they solve. They aren’t worth the hassle in a world where countries are becoming more interdependent and the ecological resources more precious to all the earth’s inhabitants.
Like Columbus, the world is beginning to wonder if there might be a new way of life beyond the bleak horizons of our limited liabilities of national patriotisms. Like Neil Armstrong, we all need to start taking a bunch of steps for Man and Woman and All our Children that will lead us to become passionate patriots of this spaceship Earth whose allegiance to the common welfare of this global neighborhood is more important than who wins the next war. Maybe God is wondering when we will finally draw the line and become responsible citizens of that world-wide Kingdom without boundaries.