Celebrating America at 250 | Article 3 of 3
by Paul Grenelle
America's founders were not worse than us.
Looking back through our history and assuming we would have done better is not humility. It is the exact pride Jesus condemned in the Pharisees, and it disqualifies us from the moral high ground we think it gives us.
The first two parts of this series made the case that no nation is perfect like the Garden of Eden, and that America's flaws do not cancel out the real good God has done through it.
That leaves one more obstacle standing between most of us and actually celebrating: the founders themselves. They were sinful men, some of them gravely so, and 250 years later, it is easy to assume we would have written a cleaner document, fought a cleaner war, and avoided every pitfall they did not.
Jesus addressed that exact move, and He used it on people making the same claim about their own ancestors. The Pharisees built monuments to the prophets their own fathers had murdered, and insisted that if they had lived in their fathers' day, they would never have done such a thing themselves.
Jesus would have none of it.
He pronounced woe on them instead, and told them that very claim, the claim of moral superiority over the previous generation, proved they were exactly like their fathers after all (Matt. 23:29-32).
Let that hit you for a second.
Thinking we are better, or would have done better, than the historical figures of America is itself proof that we would not have.
Pride blinds us to the truth of our own depravity, and nothing exposes that pride faster than low-stakes self-government.
Go sit on a homeowners' association board for a year. Watch grown adults fight over fence height, paint colors, and parking spots with the same pride, factionalism, and pettiness we are tempted to pin only on men who built an entire nation from nothing, under existential threat, with no precedent anywhere in the world to follow.
HOA's dont even deal with high-stakes moral questions. They are committee minutes and email chains, and we still cannot manage them without ego. If a shared driveway can turn neighbors into enemies, a continent-sized experiment in self-government was never going to come out clean.
We are not a better generation auditing a worse one. We are the same fallen material, simply untested at their scale.
Common grace has always worked this way. God sends rain on the just and the unjust alike (Matt. 5:45), and He has never waited for a righteous ruler before calling civil order a real good (Rom. 13:1-4). The founders did not need to be saints for what they built to be, in part, a genuine gift. Neither do we, and that is good news for anyone tempted to wait for a perfect leader, a perfect party, or a perfect church before doing any kingdom work at all.
So the gift of America is real. The stewards were flawed. Now it is our turn to steward.
Jeremiah told exiles in a pagan empire, conquered, colonized, and ruled by God-hating pagans, to build houses, plant gardens, and seek the welfare of the city anyway (Jer. 29:4-7).
Stop there for a second, because that instruction is harder than it sounds.
Jeremiah was not telling a comfortable people to stay comfortable. He was telling a defeated, displaced people to actively seek the success of the very empire that had conquered them, because in that empire's welfare they would find their own.
We are not exiles in a foreign empire. We are heirs of a flawed but genuine inheritance. If Jeremiah's exiles owed Babylon their prayers and their labor, we owe America at least that much, and arguably more.
Seeking its welfare today looks like ordinary things: paying your taxes honestly, raising children who love Christ and their neighbor, showing up to vote, serving on a board instead of only complaining about one, discipling someone this year instead of merely diagnosing the culture in front of them. We should also then support America through our celebrating of its founing,its ideals, and Lord willing, its future success.
So: celebrate America, and put some gusto in it. Life is a vapor, and this is not Eden, but Solomon still tells us to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in our toil (Eccl. 2:24; 8:15).
Celebrate it as the blessing God gave us, not one we generated; as the gospel opportunity He has used; and as a responsibility we have now inherited, building on ideals that better men than we, and worse men than we, both helped carry this far.
God Bless America! Let that celebration be loud and point past itself, to the cross. The same eternity that once had you grasping backward for a lost garden should never have been aimed at what is behind you. It should be aimed at the cross and what is ahead for us in eternity with Christ. A place where "He will wipe away every tear," where "the former things have passed away," where God Himself says, "Behold, I am making all things new" (Rev. 21:4-5).
America will never be Eden. But our hope was never left in Eden. It is found in Christ, and it always was.
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If you missed the beginning of our series "Celebrating America at 250 ” find the article links below
Read Article 1: Why Is America's 250th So Hard to Celebrate?
Read Article 2: Should We Celebrate an America That Will Never Be Perfect?
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Jesus say to people who claimed they would have acted better than their ancestors?
In Matthew 23:29–32, Jesus told the Pharisees that their claim of moral superiority over the prophets' killers proved they were exactly like their fathers, not above them.
Does common grace require a righteous ruler?
No. Romans 13:1–4 and Matthew 5:45 teach that civil order and material blessing are gifts God grants regardless of a ruler's personal righteousness.
What did Jeremiah tell Israelite exiles to do in Babylon?
In Jeremiah 29:4–7, Jeremiah instructed the exiles to build houses, plant gardens, and actively seek the welfare of the very pagan empire that had conquered them.
How should Christians practically respond to America's flaws today?
By stewarding what they have been given: voting, serving locally, raising families well, and discipling others, while keeping their ultimate hope in Christ's return rather than in any nation's success.