'Caesar is God'

I got livid at church yesterday. Now, first things first; this wasn't the teaching pastor. This was another guy filling in. However, that doesn't help me much. We're talking through the back end of the first chapter of Philippians and what he's pointing us to is this section where Paul admonishes the people to remember their citizenship in Christ. In this guy's attempt to get us to understand what Paul's saying he begins into this little schpeel about America and patriotism. Talks about how good it is to be a citizen of this country and all the freedom we have and all the opportunity that we exercise. This is supposed to be something along the same lines as what Paul is reminding the Philippians about with Christ, just all the more so. And then he went back to talk about how the people of the church understood this sort of citizenship because it was sort of the opposite response to what their citizenship to Rome was. Being a citizen of Rome was good because you had the right to due process of law and couldn't be sentenced to death most of the time... ...However, the big beef with that was that if you were a Roman citizen you had to believe that Caesar was God. This was a major drawback, our speaker pointed out. And then he moved on. Now there were several periphery issues that came up which kinda got me heated (including a rather pin-headed, ethnocentric remark that, had I been French, would have been compelled to stand up and walk out right then.... I was pretty offended, none the less), but the major beef can be found in this bare bones restatement of the first half of his message. Call me a heretic, but is it not possible that the way we live and interact within and toward our American culture is pretty much the equivalent of proclaiming it God in our lives? And if this is the case, then proclaiming oneself such an unabashedly patriotic proponent of all things American, then isn't that somewhere along the same lines as proclaiming Caesar as God if you were a Roman? Think about it... Do we loooove money? Do we work really hard to get as much money as possible? Is money not the most primary factor in much of our decision-making? Do we not allow consumerism become more than an activity but a mindset and a way of life? It transforms who we are, what we think, how we feel, and what we do. Are we sure that capitalism is not our God? Again, call me a heretic... But I would be inclined to say that, short of verbalizing this fact, We interact with and allow capitalism to affect us in much the same way as we're called to interact with and allow God to affect us. So, if this is the case, isn't Capitalism more our God than Jesus Christ (aside from all the lipservice we pay to Him, of course). Now, again, this is not me jumping on the capitalism bashing soapbox (i can get on that one much more pointedly some other time). This is about being appalled at the notion that someone who is standing at the pulpit of a church in front of a congregation associating our patriotic response to all things American as a positive similar correlation to the way we should remember our citizenship in Christ. NO! What in the world kind of word picture is that? You're going to get me to understand that I should remember to align myself with Christ in the same way that I align myself with my culture even though my culture really is my God, and not Christ? Isn't there just some inherent fallacies in the idea that my love of one 'God' in my life is alright, just as long as I love the other 'God' more? What makes me even more livid is the fact that this was said at the pulpit. Anything is fair game in discussion and debate. Ask any question you want, get as crazy and out of the box as you want. Just don't do it while standing behind the pulpit in a church. That position has too many responsibilities for someone to not take into consideration all of the implications of the things they say. I don't care if it's just supposed to be a word picture. The word picture, when thought through fully ends up associating two things positively that shouldn't be associated positively and that's a big deal especially when one of those things is our relationship and citizenship with Jesus Christ! If I walked up to the pulpit and preached a message using an illustration that following Jesus is the same as following Allah or Buddha, only that I need to follow Jesus all the more... I would get laughed off the stage and then I'd be lucky not to be tarred and feathered right outside of the church building in the parking lot for the heresy that I allowed into the congregation. I know there are differences between what was really preached and what I just used as an example, but tell me that the principle is really missing the point. I'm not trying to say that I don't like America or that I shouldn't feel blessed to live in a country with all the privileges and freedoms that I experience every day. I'm not trying to say that everything we are is horrible and despicable or deplorable. Really what I was the most disappointed in was that, not only did this guy not get that American culture is a more real God in our lives that Jesus is, but from the pulpit, he used this deification of our culture as a positive example as to how we should also follow Jesus, only, just a little more. And it was said, and the rest of the message went on and everyone listened intently, and I doubt that too many people caught on that such an association could have just been made in their heads and hearts.