There are a lot of religious people right now that seem genuinely disturbed that other religious people are becoming just like everybody else.  And in lots of different ways: in their sexual ethic, their political priorities, their vision of what it means to protect life.

And while these are important concerns in their sacred texts, God is spoken of as being explicitly concerned over one in particular…one that few mention.

A concern that has to do with pledging allegiance.

The Hebrew Scriptures are full of stories of kings in the ancient Near East.  There are stories of good kings, and bad kings, evil kings, and righteous kings, domestic kings, and foreign kings.

And right alongside these stories, in the very same pages, is this ancient wisdom and witness of mistrusting pledging allegiance to any of them.

In fact, God is spoken of as discouraging the people from taking on a king at all.  In other words, pledging allegiance to a king or country or party or any other political leader was seen as opposed to the purposes of the divine.  It was seen as contrary to the goodness and beauty and peace that God had in mind for all people.

Because, according to these ancient texts, behind the desire for a political leader was something else: “But the people…said, ‘We want a king over us.  Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.’”

The people of God wanted to be just like everybody else by raising an army.  There was a belief among God’s people that what would really bring them peace and prosperity, greatness and goodness, life and liberty, was the ability to violently confront their enemies.

To be the good guy with the gun.

The desire to trust in a political leader was being unmasked as a desire to trust in violence.

Can you even imagine?

What if we lived in a time and culture that believed that our best solution to disorder, chaos, evil, or injustice was to kill other people?  What if we lived in a nation that spent billions of dollars every year to this end?  What if we lived in a culture that spent millions of dollars every year telling stories on giant screens where the solution to the problem of injustice was subduing the enemy with fancy weapons?

What if we were told stories about rich men single-handedly enacting justice through the force of their expensive, technologically advanced weaponry?  What if they ran around in suits that looked like bats, or were made of iron, and we thought that was acceptably cool?  What if they sold us imitating costumes for our children to run around in on Halloween?

Would we, if we lived in a culture like that, be able to imagine any other way of doing good or resisting evil or reading our sacred texts?  Or would we, like the ancient Hebrews, become just like everybody else?

Notice the divine concern for a people who want to put all their eggs in a political/military basket: “This is what the king who rules over you will claim as his rights: he will take your sons…and they will run in front of his chariots…still others will make weapons of war…he will take the best of your fields…and the best of your cattle and donkeys…and you yourselves will become his slaves.”

God, in the ancient wisdom, says that a people consumed with pledging allegiance to a king/country/party/leader will end up enslaved: their children sacrificed in the name of allegiance, their assets mercilessly taxed in the name of allegiance, their spirits and souls and imaginations enslaved in a pledge of allegiance.

There is this ancient wisdom which has echoed for thousands of years, a wisdom that challenges us to see that pledging allegiance forms how we see the world, sets our priorities, undergirds our living and being, impacts our children, shapes our soil and our spirit.

Because pledging allegiance is neither inert nor benign.  And it cannot be divided or shared. It can only be singular, ultimately shaping who we are becoming for ourselves and others.

The question is not whether we do pledge allegiance; we all pledge allegiance.

The question is to whom or what are we pledging our allegiance?