Special -- Like All of Us

It was an interesting, albeit jarring, juxtaposition, coming near the end of a concert already a few miles removed from my personal musical preferences.  The artist was a little bit Liberace, a little bit Jim and Tammy Faye, a little bit Sarah Palin, a little bit Billy Mays, and a little dash of Hollywood.  It was, in many ways, worth the price of admission (which, I recall, had been free) just to see the spectacle of all those threads woven into one man and his wife -- dramatic, flamboyant, endearing, huckstering, politicking, preaching.  It was quite a combination.  Then, as the artist inched toward the climax, he reflected at length on the historical, theological, moral and ultimately global significance of the recent 4th of July holiday before launching into a "mash up" of Let There Be Peace on Earth and God Bless America.  Back and forth, like the warp and weft of a loom, the artist wove from the alternated themes a tapestry of implied Manifest Destiny and favor.  The audience was on their feet, singing along.

Well, I stood; begrudgingly.  I doubt many noticed that I wasn't singing.

Now, a day later, I still haven't teased out all the reasons for my dis-ease.  Rehearsing in my mind the lyrics to the song, apart from the otherwise undeveloped phrase, "with God as our Father," there isn't anything intrinsically religious about Let There Be Peace on Earth, though it is in our church hymnal and I can't think of any time I have ever sung it outside of a religious observance.  While I suppose it can be construed as a prayer, the grammar really suggests more of a personal vow and resolution that I doubt many non-religious types would have much difficulty singing.   And the nature of "peace" is never really defined.

Still, it seems almost hymn-like; religious in character if not overt content.  It's not that I want to hoard all aspirations for peace within the religious community; God knows it will take all of us -- religious or not -- to inch us ever nearer that longed for global community.  Which hints, I think, at the source of my musical discomfort.  While I certainly hope God does bless America, I would like to think God might equally be considerate of Italy and Ireland and New Zealand and Nicaragua and Haiti and the Galapagos Islands -- to say nothing of the African continent, Canada, Mexico, Brazil...  Well, you get the point.  And to imply, by the conflation of songs, that global peace is somehow uniquely, proprietarily tied to God's blessing of America feels...I don't know...wincingly narrow, uncomfortably arrogant, and, frankly, historically suspect.  We have certainly had our moments.  As a nation we have made precious contributions to the world in the monetary, moral, and industrial sense.  But in other ways...not so much.  To harp on the latter without appreciating the former is petulant grouchiness; but to laud the former while denying the latter is myopic at best and recklessly dangerous at worst.

I don't really think God needs us to keep incessantly reminding ourselves of how special we are.  Haven't we been around enough children absorbed by that very self-indulgence to know how irritating that can be?  One of these days, perhaps all of us in the global community can find room for the bumper sticker Lori noticed the other day on the car we were following:  "Yes, you are special -- just like all the rest of us." 

That, it seems to me, might be the day when peace really does come to the earth, and we can imagine a new song to sing.