I wish I was fluent in Japanese. I would have understood more of the prayers at a Tokyo house church I recently visited. I was convicted, actually. In praying for friends and the nation at large, church leaders wept (some of them praying in English, for my sake I think). It was refreshing to be around a group of Jesus followers who so loved their country, their families, and friends that tears flowed from earnest desires for the Holy Spirit to move people to follow Jesus. Only 4 percent of the population follow Jesus in Japan and, on average, career missionaries told me, it takes over 8 years (some say 10 to 15 years) of regularly hearing the gospel of redemption before a person becomes open to believing the truth of the covenant gospel story.

I don’t weep over America or my friends and family members who are not followers of Jesus. I hardly ever pray for them. I have no excuse. If I love them, like I claim to, one should think that I would desire to pray and weep for the Holy Spirit to move in a country as idolatrous as America. But I don’t. Instead of loving my country and its people I spend a lot of time throwing rocks at the big, bad “culture.”

Hurling rocks at non-Jesus followers for not living and thinking like those who are guided by Holy Spirit seems silly and is pathetically bloodsport for many of us. Sadly, for example, the rebukes in the Bible are too often directed at “America” by many Christians when, in fact, the contexts of those passages would normally apply to the church for not being redemptive salt and light in the world–which has always been the missional destiny of God’s people since Abraham.

Did Jesus spend more time rebuking religious people or those who were not followers of God? Do the prophets mostly rebuke religious people or the pagan nations who follow idols? Are the woes in the book of Revelation directed at religious people or “the culture?”

I wonder what would happen if Jesus followers in America wept and prayed over America instead of throwing rocks at non-Jesus followers for not having the convictions that only the Holy Spirit can bring? Instead of 3,500 churches dying ever year in America, maybe Christianity would actually grow in States.