Whatever happens to humanity happens to God. According to the 4th ecumenical council which confirmed the church's experience that in Jesus human nature and Divine nature are seamlessly joined in one person, this is how much God loves humanity. God empties himself of the privilege of Divine purity, omniscience and omnipotence, to meet each one of us on our level and in our own private hells.

We can see in Jesus's life how love and worship are seamlessly united. St. John Chrysostom in the 4th century observed, "When I leave the altar of the Divine Liturgy I go to the altar of my brother." Liturgy comes from the Greek which means literally "work of the people." It reminds us that worship and prayer are the language of love, inseparable from the blood and water that gushed from the body of Jesus at his death as testimony to the seamless relationship between God's Word and God's Deed.

When St. Athanasius in the council of Nicea stated, "God became man so that man could become God," he was affirming this as well. And so too, 20th century Romanian theologian Dimitru Staniloae who would add, "God became human so that humanity could become fully human."

So what has all this got to do with pastoral care as we celebrate the Fourth of July in what some call "the greatest nation on earth?" It has been suggested that a nation is only as strong as the collective hearts of its people. I very much agree with this. Is America great because of the spiritual strength of our people? Are we strong because our worship and love are rooted in the Grace of God? Or is it because we live in the world by the Golden rule, i.e "Those with the most gold (and firepower), rule?"

When self-love is gradually replaced by God love as we experience in Jesus who sacrificed himself willingly for the sake of the world, there is great power indeed. But it is not the power of gold or force of arms. It is the power of love and of truth that speaks even more clearly when Jesus is humiliated, shouted down and crushed by the powers of this world. A nation can be said to have spiritual strength to the degree that its people are able to serve as a light in the world not based on superior fire power but through the superior power of the Holy Fire of Grace at work among them.

Does it make sense to say as many do, that the church has often failed in this? Yes, if we understand that the Church, like the nation, is the sum of the collective hearts of a people who by our actions show that we do not trust the Holy Fire as much as we do superior firepower. As a pastoral counselor I see on a daily basis that it is not power over others that leads to healing trauma. Power over others is what creates trauma. Power over others does not teach others, but only indoctrinates them, creating at best that begrudging conformity and latent hostility of the oppressed. Power over another does not lead to an intimate marriage relationship which is born and grows out of the pure gift of love that is Grace.

Yet our nation was founded on superior firepower fed by patriotic-religious myths like "manifest destiny" and "evangelizing the heathen savages" that justified the holocaust of 12- 20 million indigenous people and an additional 20 million Africans who were captured, imported and enslaved in order to fuel an ever burgeoning national hunger for greater wealth. It is a big mistake to equate subsequent material and technological progress on this foundation as evidence of God "blessing" America.

"In the name of the Holy Trinity," Christopher Columbus wrote to Queen Isabel, in 1493, that he could "send as many slaves as you want" from the "new world" he presumed to have "discovered." This is a presumptuous perspective of entitlement and superiority that precludes real dialogue and it has been a national trauma difficult to overcome. All too often exploration and subsequent missionary efforts have been little more than a ruse for cultural genocide by attempting to create 'white Europeans' out of other cultures in the name of Christian evangelism. My Lakota adopted brother Canupa Gluha Mani recalls with pain how at 13 years old he was painted white and harassed by the police. Years later his son was stripped of his traditional braids, his language, religion and tradition in forced attendance at white-run schools paid for by our taxes. It is an old familiar story of victimization repeated over and over, while continuing responsibility of its perpetrators is ignored.

Self-examination and spiritual struggle must go deep into our personal egotism if it is to cleanse us of hidden cultural supremacy syndrome that masquerades as patriotism or national pride. We must, borrowing a phrase of St. Augustine, "become a question for ourselves" at the deepest levels, beneath the surface of mere sloganizing, propaganda and political correctness. Words may give the appearance of change or state the intention, but it is only deeds which confirm their truth.

Dr. Carl Jung, in conversation with his friend, Miguel Serrano regarding differences in how cultures think about the meaning of life and the relationship between word and deed, described his conversation with the chief of the Pueblo Indians