Having just celebrated the 4th of July a few days ago, many of my thoughts this past week were centered around patriotism and that confusing (for me) imperative that gets thrown around constantly — God bless America! At the Rockies baseball game during the 7th inning stretch, I was asked to rise (thankfully, they no longer ask me to remove my cap, as though we are about to have a do-over on the national anthem) and sing along to the Irving Berlin classic. I find I can’t sing along anymore. I am just too conflicted and too uncertain about its meaning.

I can’t really tell whether we are ordering God to bless America — it often comes out of the mouths of politicians sounding that way to me — or praying for that end to happen. But both seem inappropriate to me. I think that God has a much better God’s-eye-view of the state of the universe than any puny person in the United States of America and so I seriously doubt that God needs my advice (or the advice of anyone, for that matter) regarding the worthy recipients of further blessings. And if it is more of a prayer, than unsolicited and extremely directive advice, it feels to me like the kind of prayer that is equivalent to one asking to bring your team victory in the big game — it’s self-centered and selfish and ignores the fact that there are a whole lot of other people on other teams (or in this case other countries) who want to win, as well. How and why is God supposed to choose me and my country over God’s children in, for example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who on average make approximately 1/134th of a U.S. annual income? And, if it isn’t about blessings of monetary wealth and provision of the basic needs of life that money can buy — if it’s a prayer for more safety or better health or cleaner air and water or some such — then I can still think of other countries that are in far more dire straits than America.

If the phrase and lyrics could be changed to “God bless all nations of the world” or “God bless those who need it most,” I could perhaps feel better about joining in. But because I don’t believe that blessing is something that God goes around doing with a magic wand and since I do believe that we are the hands and feet and catalysts for God’s blessings in the world, I could really only get on board if I knew that we were all asking God to bless America with the biggest possible hearts for offering service and compassion to people of every ilk in every place and every circumstance or to bless America with more passion and intelligence for creating real equality and justice the world over or to bless America with no fear of welcoming and caring for all the strangers who knock on our door. That might make me pray and sing with gusto.

But I remain unconvinced of our motives and confused by our intentions. And so, I stood during the 7th inning stretch and listened, in silence, to the beautifully imploring trumpet tones and begged God to make all the people of my homeland – absolutely including me – less self-serving and far more kind, compassionate, generous and committed to true equality, liberty and justice for all humankind in all nations around the globe. It was, in that moment, all and the best that I could do.