There is no Christ-following that will take us back to an America we once knew and loved. Following Christ takes us somewhere better. It takes us to where Christ is – to our heavenly country, our true home. As Thomas Adams once said, “Christ did not die to purchase this world for us.”

Some years back Google prepared a little celebration on their main page for Claude Debussey (1862-1918). It was a delightful animation honoring the French composer on his birthday. Google called the animation a doodle, wherein they recreated a moonlit trip down the river Seine while Debussy’s most famous piano piece, Clair de Lune played in the background.
A riverside view from the period scrolls along, synchronized to DeBussey’s sweet melody. The evening sky is star-filled. The moon is full. The boardwalk is lined with gas lamps. A man wearing a cap is riding a penny-farthing. A windmill silently turns. Rooftop chimneys puff smoke into the air keeping time with the music. A Model T jostles along. A covered riverboat chugs by.
It is absolutely charming. So charming, in fact, it got me thinking about the power of nostalgia.
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the term nostalgia as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.”
Nostalgia is that strange ability all humans have of remembering the past without remembering the dirty and devilish details of it. We, of course, are capable of remembering past events that include the dirty details, but that is not nostalgia. Nostalgia is remembering all the good of an event, of a season of life, or even of a person. Why? Because we long for goodness. We long for the world to be good, making nostalgia, even though it is about the past, a kind of hope.
Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century philosopher, and mathematician said: “Do you miss something you’ve never had? Do you grieve the absence of a third leg or the loss of a second pair of eyes? No. We ache only when something we once knew, held, tasted, goes missing.”
Our English word nostalgia comes from two Greek words: nostos, “returning home,” and algos, “pain.”
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When the fool is struck by the Word, those with understanding will understand and beware (Pro. 19:25). The lost have seen plenty of capitulation and flip-flopping all around them. What often sets them back, awakening them to grace, is seeing men and women of God stand with conviction for the whole counsel of God without getting red in the face for those portions of Leviticus about shell-fish. The world has seen plenty of cowardice, perhaps it is waiting for Christians who are actually courageous to believe, live, and declare the Word with boldness.

In the years that I’ve been writing publicly, a common contention is that pointing out and knocking down certain worldly viewpoints might be hurtful to people. The frequent rebuff I’ve seen is that Christians are supposed to be loving, not judgy and all that. Or some keyboard warrior will ask, “Why did you pick a fight on this or that issue, shouldn’t Christians be Gospel centered?”
Confronting some cultural nonsense, whether in the church or outside it, will often earn you the chiding of other Christians implying that you need to be more gracious, sweet, and kind. I’d like to address some of these objections, showing why we need twice the courage and half the niceness.
Impotent Gospel-Centeredness
First of all, too often claiming to be “Gospel-centered” has become an excuse to confine the Gospel to the size and scope of a linen closet. You’re not gospel-centered if you’re embarrassed by the Gospel as it is found in Leviticus, or in the hard sayings of Christ, or in the biting rhetoric of the Prophets, or in the salty stories of Judges. To be Gospel-centered actually requires us to be Bible-centered. We must read and receive the whole book.
You can think that John 3:16 is the only verse you need to hop up and down on, but even there, in that famous verse, Jesus clearly lays out the consequences of not believing in the only begotten Son: you will perish. Jesus seems to be implying, trigger warning, that outside of faith in Him there is no meaningful life.
It does no good to be Gospel-centered with an impotent Gospel. The Gospel of Christ is that He demands the whole of your life, your neighbor’s life, and Saudi Arabia’s life. He is Lord of all the earth. It all belongs to Christ. He has commanded us to disciple the nations, not coax them to join our religious LARPing club. Our Gospel is to the whole world, for the whole world.
The Godly Virtue of Picking Fights
Others object that picking a fight, by writing on a controversial topic (which I have been known to do), doesn’t seem very grace-filled. This all depends on if you define grace Biblically, or if you have had it defined for you by the sort of books with the author’s face taking up 90% of the front cover. Grace is proclaiming that God looks upon those in Christ with favor, having forgiven them all their sins. Grace is not molly-coddling folly or sin. Numerous examples of Prophets & Apostles, let alone our Lord Jesus, show that picking a fight can be the most godly course of action. Through these instances of godly fights, we see God’s grace displayed to sinners.
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From a broader perspective, the brief Grenada operation in 1983 began the post-Vietnam rebuilding of the positive image of America’s military in the eyes of many citizens. That rebuilding continued with another short, successful operation in the 1989 removal of Manuel Noriega from Panama. In 1991, during the vastly larger, successful operation against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime – U.S. objectives remained limited – the American public’s favorable view of its armed forces reached a high not seen in decades. At the same time, the long overdue recognition of U.S. veterans of the Southeast Asia conflict was a welcome corollary. But the 1990s also began a trend in the U.S. military that threatened cohesion and combat readiness. Like the well-known tragedy at Parris Island in 1956 in which six Marine recruits perished in a swamp, beginning with the Clinton administration in 1993 the Pentagon wandered into the swamp of social engineering for political ends. 

In mid-October 1983, a “sordid little Leninist dictatorship” on the Caribbean Island of Grenada crumbled, resulting in the British Commonwealth country’s takeover by a more-leftist military junta. The situation immediately raised concerns in Washington regarding the potential for a large-scale hostage crisis in addition to the threat of regional instability within the Cold War’s context.
From 1979 to 1983, the revolutionary Grenadian government, led by Maurice Bishop, established close ties with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Probably its most important project was the construction of an international airport with a 9,000-foot runway. The government stated the airport was for tourism, but, inexplicably, the hotels to support the anticipated increase in visitors were lacking. Tellingly, the Point Salines airport on Grenada’s southern coast was to be capable of handling Soviet military aircraft. President Ronald Reagan called Grenada “a Soviet-Cuban colony being readied as a major military bastion to export terror and undermine democracy.”
On October 19, 1983, Bishop – considered not leftist enough by some of his fellow Marxists – was murdered. Within days, Reagan approved the chairman of the joint chiefs’ recommendation to develop plans for possible hostilities on the island, should the Grenadians and/or the Cubans – 450 of the latter were building the airport – oppose a U.S. evacuation of its citizens. Of greatest concern to the Reagan administration was the presence of several hundred medical students on the island. It feared “another Tehran” – referring to the hostage crisis in 1979-80 that contributed to President Jimmy Carter’s failed reelection bid.
On October 25, 1983, an eight thousand-member U.S.-led coalition force invaded Grenada. Its objective was to “conduct military operations to protect and evacuate US and designated foreign nationals from Grenada, neutralize Grenadian forces, stabilize the internal situation, and maintain the peace.” To no one’s surprise, the operation was one-sided and short – most hostilities ended within 72 hours – but it was somewhat akin to an NFL team defeating a scrub club, 7-3. Regardless of media coverage that gave the impression of a flawless battlefield victory, “it was an ugly win, with many problems” surrounding the employment of special operations forces.
Instances of poor operational planning and deficiencies in areas such as the knowledge of conditions on the ground at Grenada, interservice cooperation, and communications abounded. Although Washington had closely followed developments in Grenada since 1979, military planners lacked current maps of the island. In numerous cases during the operation, various military elements did not share common radio frequencies or system compatibility, contributing to the widely publicized anecdote of one military member on the ground at Grenada resorting to a payphone to call back to the United States for artillery support. While the story became an urban legend (at least one similar incident featuring a regular phone did occur, however), the actual deficiencies in communications provided the ideal platform for the “payphone” anecdote to spread far and wide – including senior U.S. officials and Hollywood.
The unfinished but usable airfield at Port Salines was a major objective. Early on October 25th, as the lead C-130 aircraft carrying the airfield seizure package approached, it lost navigational and infrared systems. Coupled with unexpected rain showers and low ceilings, the aircraft commander passed the formation’s lead to another Hercules. Following the reshuffling of aircraft, and learning the Grenadians were awaiting the assault, the Army Ranger 1st Battalion commander, Wes Taylor, directed his men to jump from only 500 feet above the ground.
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