“For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1 CSB – Read the chapter)

Tomorrow the United States of America celebrates its 250th birthday. Personally, I’m going to be up early claiming a spot on Main Street where I will watch our town’s annual Fourth of July parade. It’s the largest such parade in the area. I’ll be joined by 30-35,000 of my closest friends who will park…everywhere there is to park in our town of about 2,500 people. After that, I’m going to be hunkering down in the AC (for my European friends, that is a miraculous invention that allows you to make it dramatically cooler on the inside than it is on the outside) because it will be nearly 100 degrees already by the time the parade ends. Then I’ll go to a cookout with some friends and close the day out by watching the largest fireworks display our town has ever had on the last day of our weeklong carnival. The next morning, I’ll get up early and head to church. In other words, it’ll be about the most American weekend you could imagine. Let’s talk a bit today about what makes America so great.

I’ll just lay all my cards on the table out of the gate here. The United States of America is the greatest nation on earth. Period. There’s not a close second. That doesn’t mean all the other nations are bad. Every single person walking around on the face of the earth is a person God loves and for whom Jesus died so they might live in Him. But some of those people are governed by egregiously evil men who have bought wholly into ideologies of hatred and terror and a will to power that overrides their ability to value any lives beyond their own. Many more are good and noble nations with proud and rich histories that go back many hundreds of years. And yet the U.S. is greater than any of them.

In fact, I’ll even go so far as to declare that the United States of America is the greatest nation that has ever existed in the whole history of the world. Never has there been a nation as free as ours is. Never has there been a nation with as much opportunity as ours has. Never has there been a nation with a culture that naturally engenders the thriving of its people as ours has. Never has there been a nation so profoundly rooted in faith as ours is. There have been great and storied empires across the annals of human history, but never has there been a nation quite like ours.

America has been a symbol of freedom throughout our history. Ever since we boldly declared our freedom from England this sacred virtue has been in our very bones. We love freedom. We love the idea that within reason and respect for neighbor, we can pretty much do what we want to do, when we want to do it, how we want to do it, and nobody gets to tell us otherwise. This sense of freedom has been a beacon that has drawn countless millions from around the world to be a part of our grand experiment. And at 250 years in, our founding documents and the nation they created have been the most successful of any other created.

Yes, it’s true that there are many places and stories across our great nation where individuals and local governing institutions are making decisions and taking steps to reduce and restrict the freedom of the people in those vicinities. But these are, ironically, all freely chosen or allowed by the voters of those areas. And, where a local governing body goes too far, our nation has a built in self-correction process that consistently rolls back the worst of such efforts in the direction of more freedom.

We have a Supreme Court that pursues a vision of freedom that is as consistent as they can get it with what our Founding Fathers envisioned more faithfully than at almost any time in our nation’s history. No, that doesn’t mean that everyone is going to agree with every decision they make, but their record of setting the record straight in the direction of more freedom is remarkably consistent. On the whole, they shore a remarkable strength to make sure the Constitution and not current cultural whims is the foundation of their decisions.

In addition to being a symbol of freedom, America is a land of opportunity. People come to our shores by the millions because they know that if they can make it here, they have a better chance of finding the freedom, the success, the safety, the chance for them and their family to thrive without fear of a whole list of things that enter the conversation in order nations then they have of finding that anywhere else in the world.

In this country, if you are willing to work hard in pursuit of a dream, the odds that you will see that dream realized one day are better than they are anywhere else in the world. Our culture champions and celebrates stories of people who have done just that for a reason. It’s part of who we are.

Nowhere else in the world could some like Elon Musk do and accomplish all that he has here. Yes, there are plenty of people who are openly decrying his financial success—becoming the world’s first trillionaire was a pretty incredible achievement—but this is overwhelmingly the result of envy and a worldview that is fundamentally at odds with the worldview that made this nation what it is. But come on, the man basically created the electric car industry and invented rockets that launch a ship into space and then land themselves back on the pad they launched from. Who else has done something like that? In what other nation could something like have been possible in the private sector? There’s not one.

Opportunity for incredible things exists in this nation that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. It never has. I would argue that it never will. Yes, there are plenty of stories of people the system has seemed to simply cut against. There are plenty of people who get trapped in a grinding cycle of poverty they can’t seem to ever break from and for whom this opportunity seems like little more than a pipe dream. There are always exceptions to the rule, and they are tragic. But the rule exists for a reason. And where someone is able to break away from a micro-culture that is designed to keep them down and tap into American opportunity, their likelihood of success goes way up.

This is because our culture not only allows for, but it encourages this type of thing. There are plenty of signs of cultural rot in America. There is a whole class of politicians who thrive on grievance-mongering. These elements and these politicians must be opposed for the sake of our future health and vibrancy as a country.

Yet while these cultural viruses certainly exist (and are even unfortunately nurtured in some areas), on the whole there is much health in our culture. We are a generous people. We are a tolerant people. We are a forgiving people. Neighbors help neighbors. There is a basic love for one another that permeates our culture at a very foundational level. We love to celebrate as well. This weekend there will be celebrations happening all over the country. Some will be large and official. Some will be local and cherished. Most will be at individual homes and in neighborhoods as friends and family gather to delight in all we have and all we are as a nation. All of this is part of what makes this nation so good.

Ultimately, though, the thing that makes our nation so unique is our faith. No other nation in the world was or has been founded so consciously and explicitly on the ideas of the Christian worldview as ours was. That’s not the same thing as saying we are a Christian nation. We’re not. We were founded to be a nation in which people of every religion could pursue their God in line with the dictates of their faith freely. But the idea that made such a thing seem reasonable in the first place have only ever come from a single source: the Christian worldview.

Our nation only makes sense from the standpoint of the Christian worldview and only the Christian worldview has the necessary ideas to sustain it into the future. We live in a day when there are several different worldviews competing for dominance. These worldviews are represented by a variety of different politicians. The visions we are being given for the future of our nation are not the same. And they are not all equal. Visions rooted in envy and class hatred will not lead to our thriving as a people. Visions rooted in hatred of certain groups won’t either. Only a vision that rings consistent with that of our Founders in which all people are created equal and have been endowed by their Created with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will see our grand experiment continue long into the future. And the only source for this vision is, again, the Christian worldview.

The only real question we have to answer is this: can we continue to be the shining city on a hill we have long been? Freedom doesn’t persist on its own. It must be sustained. It must be nurtured. It must be guarded. Paul understood this. He called the believers in the region of Galatia to not lose the freedom they had in Christ by enslaving themselves once again to sin. If they behaved in ways out of sync with the freedom they had in Him, they would lose it.

The same is true for us. If we as a people behave in ways that are out of sync with the freedom we have long cherished, if we vote for candidates who profess to hate the very nation they seek to represent (yes, I’m talking about the various primary-winning candidates who are members of the Democratic Socialist of America, a political group that exists to undermine and destroy everything that has made this nation great in the first place), if we give up on our most cherished ideals because of envy or greed, we will eventually lose the treasure we have. Freedom requires virtue, and virtue requires faith. One cannot exist without the other, and the other is impossible without the first in the chain. If we want our great, great, great grandchildren to still be celebrating when we reach our 500th birthday, then we have work to do.

We must recommit to what’s true and not give in to lies about reality. We must recommit to the virtues that made our nation possible in the first place and without which we will erode our very foundations. We must recommit to loving our neighbors and being good, conscientious, informed citizens in our communities. We must recommit to faith in the God who has blessed this nation for 250 years, and will for 250 years more should He tarry in His return and if we walk the path of righteousness and justice as a people. If we do this, we will yet celebrate many more happy birthdays long into our future.

May you delight in all this nation is, has been, and will yet be as you celebrate with your friends and family this weekend. May God indeed bless America.