COMMENTARY: On America’s 250th birthday, remember we were made by God to receive love ourselves, and to show love to others.
During these days of reflection on our nation’s founding, I’ve been pondering something St. Augustine noted in the greatest of his works. He said that a state not governed by justice is no more than a gang of thieves. Augustine wrote those words in The City of God — a book that deliberately contrasts the earthly city, the City of Man, with God’s heavenly city, our true destiny and home, the New Jerusalem.
In the mind of Augustine, Christians were made for the City of God, but we pass through the City of Man on the pilgrimage of our lives. There is no utopia in this world. We can never have perfect justice in the earthly city because of sin. But we can make the world around us better or worse by what we do and how we live as “resident aliens” in the City of Man.
That includes how we shape the character of our shared political life. We ennoble it with our virtues or degrade it with our poisons.
Augustine has always had a very
