Weak-Kneed Nationalism: Not Always Such a Bad Thing

The “I am a Canadian” beer commercial is the latest stupid expression of our unique Canadian neurosis: national inferiority. We flog our stupefying sense of “not being as good as our neighbors to the south,” and in the end define ourselves negatively: we can’t say who we are; we say who we aren’t. Ask a psychiatrist how healthy a person is who can only say what they aren’t!

Now “Joe” is our latest Canadian hero. Not only was the commercial played live before hockey crowds and in school assemblies, it mutated into look-alikes: “Je m’apelle Guy, and I am not a Canadien”; “My name is Baz, and I am a Newfie”; “My name is Fong! And I am Chinese!”; “My name is Giuseppe! And I am Italian!”

Earlier I had watched an American music show from the Kennedy Centre where a number of American singers (many seemed to be evangelicals) belted out their patriotism with good old American fervor and enthusiasm. When they sang “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America,” cameras zoomed in on faces lifted heavenward with tears unashamedly streaming down their cheeks. You could feel the heartbeat of nationalism as it mixed with Christian faith and lifted them to patriotic zeal.

These two images clashed. Canadians often envy Americans who mix their faith with nationalistic passion. How well we live up to the morbid American joke: “Why do Canadians cross the road?” Answer: “To get to the middle.” I so wish we could rise up in unabashed enthusiasm and define Canadianism as something other than, “Being Canadian is having a government-managed health care system.”

However, this diminutive nationalism may not be so bad after all. As God uses the foibles of people, so He does nations. As he employs various personalities for good, so too he can take the insecurities of a nation and use them for the good of kingdom-life.

A Jewish singer living in exile was taunted by the loss of home and culture.
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. Psalm 137.
Far from his homeland, the exile’s captors asked for a song. Lonesome for the ways and people of his homeland, he wondered if he could even sing.

It is in this passage that I see how God can use this crazy Canadian phobia of national insecurity for His world-wide purposes. For if all you can sing while exiled and tortured in a foreign land are songs of one’s culture (Jerusalem), then you really have nothing to sing. But if you can sing the songs of the King (Zion), then you can sing anywhere. It’s the life of the King which is transportable, not the mixture of God and culture.

A missiologist has said that Canadians are successful in missions not only because we have learned to live in the extremes of climate but because we aren’t defined by our nationalistic impulses. When we travel to other cultures, the Gospel we preach is less ladened with cultural icons and memories. In contrast to the British, Germans or Americans, for example, many of our Christian traditions are imported from the UK, France and the USA. Add to this the federal policy of a cultural mosaic in which newly arrived cultures are encouraged to foster their homeland memories. More and more there is less and less which defines us. While this means that we don’t have the emotional framework for a compelling national identity, it does create an environment in which our vision of Kingdom-life is less attached to whatever we feel it is to be Canadian.

That our nationalism is limp, or seemingly insipid in comparison to the American love of country, may not be such a bad thing. As much as I disdain “Joe” as he exposes that disturbing side of our convoluted national consciousness, I know that Canada has been a spiritual bread-basket which God has used to bless the world. I just wish it had been something other than a beer commercial which got my attention!