Should we take down our American flag?

My wife, Tracy, and I have a years long squabble about Old Glory.

When we bought our home almost 13 years ago, one of my first purchases was an American flag to hang on our front porch.

Tracy and I have argued about that flag ever since.

You may be sure that Tracy is a patriot. She is the descendent of immigrants who came to the United States in the early 20th century. Many of her relatives fought in World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. This is something she will tell you with pride.

So she loves the flag; she just doesn’t love the one I fly on our house.

Because it is huge.

She’s correct that it’s a little too big to be on our front porch. Sometimes when she is rushing out the door to go to work, the wind whips that big flag up into her face.

“Get a smaller flag!” she says.

“But I like the big flag,” I say. “You can see it from all the way down the street!”

In recent days, we had a different kind of conversation about the flag. It wasn’t about whether we should get a smaller one; it was about whether we should have one at all.

We are concerned and unhappy about some of the things that people we elected to represent us are doing in our name. In other words, the temp employees we hired to represent us are not representing us. Not in their actions nor in their attitudes, policies, or words.

A big part of our discomfort comes from our devotion to follow the life and teachings of Jesus the Christ. In the Bible, we see Jesus befriending everyone, including those he had a right to avoid, cast off, and condemn. Jesus, we believe, is God, the Creator, Lover, and Sustainer of all life. Of course he draws near to everyone in whom his breath of life breathes.

We try to do as Jesus does, so we work hard to share life among circles of neighbors who could not be more different from us. These days, many of those beloved neighbors feel fear and pain because of what some in Washington say about them or plan to do to them.

It hurts us when they ask: Is this America?

When those we love feel this way, we wonder if flying our big flag comes across as contemptuous, dismissive, or threatening.

We are old enough to know that there has never been, nor will there ever be, a time when our government or its policies are perfect representations of our ideals and our will. If Washington has to get it just right for us to fly the flag, our flagpole will be empty for the rest of our lives.

But what some of our temp workers in Washington are doing now is more corrupt, cruel, self-serving, and sloppy than anything I ever imagined possible. Worse, some of them seem to believe that they are America. Thus, whatever they are, do, or say is what America should be, do, or say. They act as if what is good for them is good for America. They wrap themselves in the flag as if the flag belongs to them and means whatever they say it means.

This is not new. Since I began to follow politics in my teen years, I’ve watched cynicism, self-righteousness, and smugness metastasize and overtake both political parties. They are now two sides of the same idolatrous coin.

I am angry. I resent that they captured the flag that means so much to me. I resent that, to be a “true patriot,” they demand that I pledge allegiance to them as if they are America.

Because of that, I feel like flying my flag is giving them my tacit approval.

But I keep coming back to this: We the People.

My fellow citizens are people of compassion, competence, courage, faith, generosity, grace, hope, humility, integrity, kindness, and selflessness.

The flag stands for We the People.

Not the politicians and pundits. Not who the politicians and pundits say We the People are; but who we are by our birthright and our billions of small acts of decency and fellowship toward one another and our common home.

So if you come down our street this Independence Day, you will find that our flag is still there.

Because the flag does not belong to the parties and politicians; it belongs to the American people. All of them. Past, present, and future. Every one of them is a thread that weaves in with all the others to make a national story that is still being written.

When we fly the flag, we don’t fly it for those who bought positions of power for themselves. We fly it for you. We fly it for us. All of us. Every American and would-be American. Every one of them made in God’s image and endowed with those “certain unalienable rights.” Every class. Every color. Every creed. Every ethnicity and nationality. Every gender. Every one.

We fly the flag for “liberty and justice for all.”

So long may the Stars and Stripes wave on our front porch…and may my wife learn to duck!

Grace and peace.