An expansion of his earlier work, The Gospel According to America, David Dark's The Promise of America "is an effort in moral orientation, an attempt to make sense of our times . . . it is also a call to confession and a primer in patriotism as I understand it."
Points to Ponder
Truth matters, but in America today, widening divisions are producing two very different versions of reality. We must fight this and be honest with ourselves about the good and bad about our country, past and present. Dark calls for 'attempted truthfulness'- of getting the facts straight and the story right regarding our past and present realities. But 'attempted' highlights the challenge, as we are all finite, fallen, and have limited perspective. Nobody has truly clear vision or understanding. We know what we have personally experienced and witnessed, and coupling that more general beliefs on God and man, we form a view of America: our history, our problems, and what to do about them. But is our view complete and correct? Due to our aforementioned deficiencies, that answer is no. We thus need to wrestle with these topics in what Dark calls "Beloved Community," which is "an enlarged sense of neighborliness that strives to maintain "neighbor" as an ever-widening category, even when the neighbor appears before us as a threat or an enemy. The injunction to love the neighbor in the minute particulars of speech and action has never been an easy one, but it might be the nearest and most immediate form of patriotism available to any of us."
Dark highlights several things repeatedly throughout his work:
- The Bible is not only to be personally believed but a 'devastating social critique' to be lived out and grappled with in community. Jesus tells us to love each other; to champion causes (both personally and in government) that enable mutual thriving and justice. What that looks like can be messy and complicated and vary from community to community.
- "We are learners, not possessors, of truth." We need to remind ourselves that "our understanding is not . . . a God's-eye view." We need a "living awareness of our fallibility." In short, we need humility and an openness to change our minds. We need patience and an awareness/appreciation of complexity (life isn't always reducible to a meme or sound bite). We need a loving consideration of God and others as we stumble our way through ascertaining the truth and what to do about it to produce a thriving community.
- Don't confuse the reign of God with our specific country. Every nation has horrors in its past and present; things that unsettle us and make us want to minimize or deny them. Yet "A nation that flees any and all unsettledness is a nation that wants to be brainwashed." Truth can hurt. It needs to.
- We all have (and need) a 'pantheon of elders'- those to whom we look for insight, wisdom, and guidance. These can be church members, popular artists, and others. But we need to be open to adding to or adjusting our pantheon constantly- making sure we're not painting ourselves into an echo chamber where the only people we listen to or respect are those who say what we already believe to be true. Again, it comes down to reminding ourselves of our fallibility and tendency towards tribalism, and fighting against that- the Spirit knows no division.
Review
I agree with Dark's overall points. This book is basically a call to humility and community; that's good. But the book is repetitious- the above points are repeated again and again. It also meanders and appears to become more of a list of pop-culture examples* in music, books, and movies where artists wrestle with truths and how to handle them. As I read, I was increasingly confused on the overall point of the book. In short, the title and subtitle are false advertising: the message could be conveyed in a blog post. Or a long sentence: Be humble; consider others; in many counselors there is wisdom; the Bible calls us to pursue mutual thriving and goes well beyond personal beliefs. Agreed on all fronts. But those points could have been conveyed in well under 160 pages, and the book should have been renamed to more accurately reflect the content.
Rating: B-
*I did come away with a list of works to read later; I appreciated that.
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