Perhaps I will be misunderstood in this, but Conservative Christians run the risk of passing into idolatry when they hold that their particular political ideology is consistent with the Mind of God. I do not say this lightly, for only God knows how invested and indebted I am to the minimalist constitutional dream that is America. But whenever I see the Cross superimposed on the flag, I shudder.

It is imperative that we walk the razor's edge between support for our limited government's founding on Judeo-Christian principles and the belief that God invariably sides with America and the West. He is too great for that and His concern is in individual souls -- not in establishing any of our "ant farms" as the earthly City of God. Institutions are temporal regimes and civilizations pass away from memory. They all fall from their masculine virtues into luxury and decay. It is only the human soul that lives forever, and God is preciously mining them as his sole treasure on the battlefield of human history.

Governments, in the eye of eternity, are only expedient in that they are the chessboard whereupon human beings react nobly or falsely. All earthly regimes exist as prop scenery: the intricate backdrop of God's proving grounds. The lessons we open ourselves to will determine how well we account ourselves on the material stage as we play our earnest and heartfelt scenes to the Great Observer.

Glenn Fairman writes from Highland, Ca. He welcomes your correspondence at arete5000@dslextreme.com and can be followed at www.stubbornthings.org and on Twitter.