How do we make America great and what does that mean? Is America great because it has good values? Is America great because our vision of the world is positive? I don’t really know how to interpret “Make America Great Again.” Could it be that we are a Christian nation because we say “in God we trust” on all our money? Is that what makes us great? Or is it because God has blessed us so richly that we must therefore be great?

I am frustrated by the idea of “Make America Great Again” when there is no reference to what makes us great and who determines that! The preamble of the Constitution states that “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Is this the high vision and value that makes us great? If that is the case, who constitutes the “We” in the value system that we have adopted in our Constitution? Does it include African Americans, Native Americans, Children born in America, Christians, Jews & Gentiles, immigrants, and LGBTQ people or only white people from Europe? Is that what makes America great?

Emma Lazarus’s poem at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty, is that our guiding principle, our national vision of what makes America great? “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to be free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” I hope so. This is what Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion looks like. If being a “Good Samaritan” to all who enter or live in America does not exemplify a value system that makes America great again, heaven help us! Why ask God to bless us if we can’t love our neighbors as ourselves?

If anyone says we need to “Make America Great Again” I will take that to mean that we want to love our neighbors as ourselves; that we all want to treat others as we want to be treated. Anyone that does not espouse these values does not want to make America great again. They just want America to be selfish!

“When we allow people of other races, cultures, religion, [or genders], to be oppressed and marginalized we have become the antithesis of all that Jesus taught [and demonstrated in His life.]” Jesse C Middendorf General Superintendent Emeritus, Church of the Nazarene.

If we, as a country, go against Christ’s teachings of love, we will never be great.

Edward Vos is a Jamestown resident.