A Facebook friend recently expressed his discomfort with pledging allegiance to the flag, given that our allegiance ought to be to Jesus Christ. He’s certainly right that some Christians take things too far. A Babylon Bee article satirized this problem well when it declared that “Dozens Accept America As Lord And Savior At First Baptist Dallas Service.” I’m glad to see Christians wrestling with the issue. Only rarely do I hear American Christians even acknowledge that God sometimes asks for a fidelity that conflicts with the expectations of the state, or that the American government might demand something contrary to the law of God. But just because we can do patriotism badly doesn’t mean that loving our country is wrong. In fact, it’s a moral good, and patriotism is a virtue.

How could this be? On the one hand, Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). But on the other hand, he also says, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17). How can we resolve this apparent contradiction? We don’t have to, because Jesus resolved it for us in front of Pontius Pilate (John 19:10-11). When Pilate boasted, “Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” Jesus replied, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.”

In other words, whether Pilate acknowledged it or not, the power and authority he had came from God. This means both (a) that we should respect lawful secular powers, and (b) that there are limits on the state’s power. If God and the state contradict one another, we should never forget that “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). St. Paul says this same thing: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1-2). Implicit within this reasoning is that you can’t obey the governing authorities in doing something evil, since it’s a violation of both your duties to God and it undermines the state’s own authority.

But we can never let our focus on the limits of our obedience take away from the reality that Christianity isn’t a religion of anarchy. Perhaps that’s somewhat surprising. After all, both Jesus and (many of) his initial followers were unjustly executed by the State, yet the inspired Christian texts are explicit in the need to “be subject to the governing authorities.”

St. Thomas Aquinas goes so far as to describe patriotism as a type of virtuous piety. As he explains, the virtue of piety is primarily about the divine worship paid to God, but secondarily extends to the honor paid to country and to our parents. What do God, country, and your parents all have in common? Each have given you more than you could ever repay. No amount of thanks will make you even with the parents who literally cooperated with God in giving you life, and no amount of thanks will make you square with the country whose bounty you daily enjoy. And of course, more than all else, you can never “square up” with God, the ultimate bestower of all good things.

So there’s no way in justice to render to God, to nation, or to your parents what they deserve. All that’s left is to take time to honor them for the gifts you cannot repay. This action, inadequate though it may be, is the best that you can do, and it’s what Aquinas and other theologians mean by piety. It’s why the Ten Commandments go from the worship owed to God to immediately talking about the honor owed to father and mother, and it’s why faithful Christians ought to be patriotic. It’s not a matter of declaring that all other countries are bad (anymore than loving your family is a judgment against other families) but of recognizing the particularities of the gifts you’ve been given, and responding in loving piety.

So go, savor that barbecue, enjoy the fireworks, and delight in an opportunity to exercise the virtue of piety, in the form of patriotism, this Fourth of July!