day no. 16,582: pure country

"Patriotism has then, many faces. Those who would reject it entirely do not seem to have considered what will certainly step—has already begun to step—into its place. For a long time yet, or perhaps forever, nations will live in danger. Rulers must somehow nerve their subjects to defend them or at least to prepare for their defence. Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed this can be done only by presenting every international conflict in a purely ethical light. If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for ‘their country’ they must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, or civilisation, or humanity. This is a step down, not up. Patriotic sentiment did not of course need to disregard ethics. Good men needed to be convinced that their country’s cause was just; but it was still their country’s cause, not the cause of justice as such. The difference seems to me important. I may without self-righteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds—wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine—I become insufferable. The pretence that when England’s cause is just we are on England’s side—as some neutral Don Quixote might be—for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nonsense draws evil after it. If our country’s cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.” — C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

We honor or fathers by honoring our fatherland. We do not honor our fathers by pretending they were perfect, but by refusing to publish every flaw we have observed. We do not need to make our fathers into something they weren't in order to honor them in their office, but we also don't need everyone else to know exactly what they were at their worst. Our fatherlands are not perfect. They do not merit our respect based on their resume per se, but based on their home base. We belong, in some form or fashion, to the soil from which we sprung. We may take issue with our homeland and in fact, in some circumstances we must, but not because we hate it, but because we don't.

“No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.” ― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

The true patriot, like the true solider, fights not for the hate in front of him, but for the love behind him. He may even fight against his own country, but not because he hates it, but because he dearly loves it. The good Pharisee agrees with God and wishes better for it than what it was reduced to. The good Samaritan agrees with God and wishes his actions weren't so shocking. 

"'My country, right or wrong,' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.'” ― G.K. Chesterton, The Defendant

Citizens of heaven have a higher allegiance than boundary and time assigns, but not a lesser one. They do not disciple the nations by insisting on the dissolution of nations. They do not preach detachment to those with addresses. We love our country, right or wrong, as we love our spouses, right or wrong, but we do not pretend like the rightness or wrongness doesn't matter, for that would be to hate our country or our spouse. Discipline and instruction accompany objects of affection, not abomination.

Hebrews 11:16

But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

The patriot loves his country by desiring a better country. He loves its warts by investing in wart remover. He loves its crooked smile by paying for and putting up with its braces. The citizen of heaven is the kingdom of God with a home address. He pays the utility bill in the place where he follows Eden's blueprints. God has prepared a country for people who care about their current one and expect others to do the same with theirs. We honor our fathers by encouraging others to honor theirs. We do not honor our father for the sake of dishonoring others, but encourage everyone to love the land of their birth by honoring their Father who art in Heaven.