Renewed Appreciation for the American Dream

For Christmas I received the book America: The Last Best Hope.  A friend told me it was a great summary of our country’s history.   In the past few days I have read 250 pages and gone from the Pilgrims to Andrew Jackson as president.  I love the book.  It’s been inspiring and encouraging to retrace through the history lessons I learned about (or was supposed to learn) in high school and college.  The tenacity, brilliance, faith and determination of the early leaders in our country is amazing. By the way, the book points out the good, bad and ugly … so it’s not just sugar-coated history.

Julie is currently reading Radical by David Platt.  I read it months ago and resonated with the tag line “taking back our faith from the American Dream.” It’s odd to see these two books sitting side-by-side in our bedroom.

At first glance you could assume that these books have opposing messages.

In 2010 our team rallied behind our new RightNow mission statement …  to help people trade in the pursuit of the American Dream for a world that desperately needs Christ.

Each word in that statement is packed with significance. Some people have misunderstood our intentions behind the phrase American Dream. They think we are attacking the freedoms and values that our country was built on.  There’s a sentiment that we might be bordering on unpatriotic or anti-American.

For the record, I am not anti-American. I don’t know Platt, but I am going to go out on a limb and say he isn’t anti-American.

The American Dream that we see in our county today screams me, me, me and more, more, more.  Just turn on the TV and watch any reality show where people are promised instant fame, fortune and love.  The American Dream has been hijacked.  It’s become a nightmare.

Reading through this history book has reminded me of the early American spirit of opportunity, potential and hard work.  We’ve lost some of that as an American culture and as the American church.  Hard work has been replaced with entitlement.  Potential has been replaced with instant.  Opportunity has been replaced with comfort.

I don’t think America: The Last Best Hope and Radical are books that contradict each other.  One reminds us of where we’ve been … the other warns us of where we are heading.

On that note, our mission statement is asking people to trade in the pursuit of self … to stop pursuing the distorted American Dream that says life is all about me.  That’s an uphill battle in our current culture … but Jesus is bigger than America and its dream (original and hijacked).  His teachings in the Bible remind me that it’s ok to go against the flow of culture.