Most people don't do evil because they love evil. That's pathology. Most people love what's good. But we can be turned from it if we don't "zealously guard" our hearts (Proverbs 4:23). Most of the world's evil is done by people who've been manipulated to think it's good.
Most people know loving God is the highest good. For many, loving our country is often the next-highest good.
Manipulators know how we think...and use it to get us to think their way. Their most effective seductions are making us think, and do, evil because it's "Christian" or "patriotic."
Smiling people who approach us wrapped in a flag, prominently wearing a cross, may be genuine. But knowing those are manipulators' favored ways of worming their way into our hearts, it's wise to be suspicious of anyone trying too hard to look like a "Christian patriot." Authenticity doesn't need props.
John Bunyan's "Faith" met a manipulator in "Pilgrim's Progress." "Faith's" comment about him (paraphrased here) has always stuck in my mind:
He said he lived in the town of Deceit, and he invited me home with him. But it came burning hot into my mind that whatever he said, and however he smiled, he meant to make me his slave.
Amen. So it is.
