A Memorial Day reflection on our nation and our souls

Christians are used to our religious holidays being preempted for secular purposes. In American culture, Easter is more about colored eggs and bunnies than the empty tomb and risen Lord. Thanksgiving is more about food and football than faith and gratitude. Christmas is more about the coming of Santa Claus than the coming of Jesus Christ.

Other religions have not suffered such a fate in our society. Many Muslims begin their Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca today, but no revision of this “pillar” of Islam has emerged in secular society. Observant Jews completed Shavuot last Saturday, commemorating the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai, but there is no secular version.

Nonetheless, it is unsurprising that Christian holy days would become secular holidays in a post-Christian and even anti-Christian culture. But we should be surprised that even a secular holiday has been secularized as well.

Why there is a “Memorial Day”

On May 5, 1868, an organization of Union veterans issued the “Memorial Day Act,” formally establishing a day when the nation would remember its Civil War dead and decorate their graves with flowers. After World War I, the day was expanded to honor those who died in all American wars.

The Uniform Monday Holiday Act, enacted in 1968 and effective in 1971, designated Memorial Day a national holiday and moved it to the last Monday in May. Its singular purpose was to call the nation each year to remember those who died in military service to our nation.

But if recent years are any indication, not much will be done today to fulfill that purpose.

Many Americans conflate Memorial Day with Veterans Day and think they are intended to fly flags and feel patriotic sentiments in honor of all our military. Many will not even be this reflective, spending today as the “unofficial beginning of summer” with backyard barbeques and similar holiday activities.

It is especially ironic that a day intended to commemorate the sacrifice of our military heroes has been sacrificed in this way.

There is a spiritual lesson here for us, one that transcends the day and its history.

The temptation of transactionalism

In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis writes, “From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the center is opened to it.”

However, there is a third option: We can choose God so he will return the favor. We can serve him so he will serve us. We can pray so he will provide, read his word so he will reward us, and worship him on Sunday so he will bless us on Monday.

There’s a paradoxical level to this transactional trap: If we love God for no reason except that he is worthy of our worship and serve him only out of gratitude for his grace, such unconditional commitment positions us to experience his best for us (Matthew 6:33). This is not a prosperity gospel, but the logical consequence of trusting an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful Father who must only and always want what is best for us.

However, this fact makes transactionalism even more attractive when practiced with conscious humility and a subliminal expectation of divine reward for such selflessness.

The only way out of this box that I know is to admit it to God and to ourselves and then to do all we can to forget it. The more we focus on the Lord, the less room we have to focus on ourselves, and thus the less margin to consider the consumerism latent in such faithfulness.

To cite C. S. Lewis again, humility is not thinking less of ourselves—it is thinking of ourselves less.

“Greater love has no one than this”

Every man and woman who joins the US military takes an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And all are willing to die to fulfill that oath. I will always remember hearing a former Navy SEAL comment on the annual Army-Navy game: Every person on the field is willing to die for every person in the stands.

Our fallen heroes considered their country worthy of their lives by giving what Abraham Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion.” The best way I know to honor them is to do what a wounded veteran once asked of me: Make this a country worthy of such sacrifice.

The best way I can do that is to love my Lord and my neighbor with such selfless devotion that each receives my best each day. And the best way I can do that is to submit my life every day to the empowering and transforming Spirit of God (Ephesians 5:18).

Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday, marking the day early Christians were “filled with the Spirit” (Acts 2:4) and launched a spiritual movement that changed the world (Acts 17:6). If America’s Christians were to experience Pentecost each day, could we see such a movement in our nation?

In light of the sacrifices we remember today, can we do any less?

I know of no better commentary on Memorial Day than Jesus’ declaration:

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

How will you demonstrate such love today?

NOTE: For more on today’s theme, please see my latest website article, “Are we celebrating or commemorating? The forgotten origin of Memorial Day.”

Quote for the day:

“Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them.” —President Franklin D. Roosevelt

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