America is #1 in...

Oct 28

8 min read

Updated: 7 days ago

Some years ago I came across a scene from an American TV drama called The Newsroom. Jeff Daniels plays a cable news anchor sitting on a university panel, and a young student stands up and asks a simple question: why is America the greatest country in the world?

He tells her it isn’t. Then he reels off the statistics. America well down the list in education, in life expectancy, in infant mortality. First only in things like how many of its own people it locks up, and how much it spends on its military.

The clip went everywhere. Millions of people watched it, and I was one of them. In fact, I watched it many times. And I’ll be honest with you: on those measures, the data doesn’t lie. He had a point.

But the more I watched it, the more I realised he was using the wrong measuring stick.

There’s a verse I keep coming back to whenever I think about America. Jesus is describing the day when the nations are gathered before Him, and He says to the righteous: “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Matthew 25:40).

The least of these. The hungry, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner, the child with no one to come for them. That’s the measuring stick Jesus uses.

I’m not an American. I’m an Australian who spent eighteen years living in China, and I’ve watched America from a long way off for most of my life. From the outside, you notice things that Americans themselves are often too humble, or too busy, to notice. And here’s what I’ve noticed: when you measure America by the words of Jesus, it leads the world.

Jeff Daniels’ character never got to that list. So let me read it to you.

America is #1 in missions

Before He ascended, Jesus gave His followers one last instruction: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19).

No nation on earth has answered that call like America. It has sent out more missionaries than any other country, ordinary men and women who left their hometowns in Tennessee and Texas and Ohio to live in jungles, deserts and mega-cities where most people had never heard the name of Jesus.

Billy Graham, a farm boy from North Carolina, preached in person to more people than anyone in history: well over two hundred million, in nearly every country on earth. Youth With A Mission, founded by an American, became one of the largest missionary movements in the world, sending young people out in their thousands.

I’ve met some of those missionaries. In China, I saw American believers quietly loving their neighbours, learning the language, raising their families far from home, and asking for nothing. They’ll never make the headlines. But heaven knows their names.

America is #1 in putting the Bible in people’s hands

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105).

In 1899, a few travelling salesmen met in a hotel in Wisconsin and started an organisation called the Gideons. Their idea was simple: put a Bible in every hotel room, so that a lonely traveller would never be far from the word of God. Today the Gideons have placed more than two billion Bibles in hotels, hospitals, schools and prisons around the world.

Think about that for a moment. Two billion. Somewhere tonight, someone at the end of their rope will open a bedside drawer and find hope waiting for them, because a group of American businessmen believed God’s word should be free.

Add to that the translators of Wycliffe and the American Bible Society, who have carried scripture into languages that had never been written down, and you have a nation that has done more than any other to make sure every person on earth can read God’s word in their own tongue.

America is #1 in feeding the hungry

“For I was hungry and you gave Me food” (Matthew 25:35).

Walk into almost any American church and you’ll find a food pantry, a soup kitchen roster, or a Thanksgiving drive. Look further afield and you’ll find World Vision, Compassion International, Samaritan’s Purse and the Salvation Army, among the largest Christian relief organisations on the planet, all with deep American roots.

And every Christmas, millions of American families, kids and grandparents alike, pack shoeboxes with toothbrushes, pencils, toys and soap for Operation Christmas Child. More than two hundred million of those boxes have now been delivered to children in poor and war-torn countries, each one carrying the message of Jesus. I can’t think of anything more beautiful than a child in a refugee camp opening a box packed by a child in Alabama.

America is #1 in healing the sick

“I was sick and you visited Me” (Matthew 25:36).

Through PEPFAR, America mounted the largest effort any nation has ever made against a single disease, and millions of people in Africa are alive today because of it. Most of them will never know whose name was on the cheque.

American mission hospitals serve across Africa and Asia, often in places where they are the only medical care for hundreds of miles. Mercy Ships, founded by an American, sails floating hospitals to the poorest coastlines in the world, offering free surgery to people who would otherwise live with blindness, tumours and deformities their whole lives.

When disaster strikes anywhere on earth, a hurricane, an earthquake, a famine, American church volunteers are among the first on the ground. Samaritan’s Purse flies in field hospitals. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, one of the largest volunteer relief forces in the country, rolls in with kitchen trailers and chainsaws and willing hands. That’s the Good Samaritan, and Jesus told us exactly what to do with that story: “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

America is #1 in visiting the prisoner

“I was in prison and you came to Me” (Matthew 25:36).

Remember that statistic from the start, about how many people America locks up? America’s churches have answered it with the largest prison ministry on earth.

After serving time in prison himself, Chuck Colson came out a changed man and founded Prison Fellowship. It now reaches into well over a hundred countries. Every week, American volunteers walk through prison gates to sit with men and women the world has written off, and tell them they are not forgotten.

Through its Angel Tree program, churches buy Christmas presents for the children of prisoners and deliver them in their mum’s or dad’s name. Picture a little girl on Christmas morning holding a gift that says it’s from her father. That’s grace you can wrap.

America is #1 in taking in the children

“Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14).

For decades, American families have adopted more children from other countries than any other nation on earth. Children with disabilities. Children no one else came for. Children who had been told, in one way or another, that they didn’t matter.

Countless American churches have adoption ministries, foster care networks and funds to help ordinary families bring a child home. That’s the gospel in its purest form: the adopted becoming sons and daughters.

America is #1 in giving

“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

Americans give more to charity than any other people on earth, and a large share of it is given through the church. Not by billionaires, mostly, but by ordinary folks putting something in the plate every Sunday, sponsoring a child, supporting a missionary family, or quietly paying a neighbour’s power bill.

And when you give like that, you’re not just giving money. You’re building something. Habitat for Humanity began in the small town of Americus, Georgia, with a Christian couple who believed every family deserved a decent home. Since then it has helped tens of millions of people around the world into safe housing. As Jesus said, the wise man builds his house on the rock.

America is #1 in loving its enemies

“Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you” (Matthew 5:44).

In 1945, America won the greatest war in history. And then, instead of plundering the defeated, it rebuilt them. The Marshall Plan restored Western Europe, Germany included. America helped rebuild Japan. Within a generation, former enemies had become some of America’s closest friends.

I’ve searched history for another conqueror who did that. I haven’t found one.

And that same spirit lives on in America’s churches. When a gunman attacked an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in 2006, the Amish families forgave him publicly. They comforted his widow. They went to his funeral. The whole world watched in amazement as an American community obeyed the hardest command Jesus ever gave.

America is #1 in freedom to worship

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

America was the first nation to write freedom of worship into its founding law. Every church gathering in America, every Bible study in a living room, every gospel song sung on a Sunday morning, grows in the soil of that freedom. And believers in other lands have looked to that example, and drawn courage from it, for nearly two and a half centuries.

America is #1 in gospel music

“Oh, sing to the LORD a new song! Sing to the LORD, all the earth” (Psalm 96:1).

I’ve been a musician for more than forty years, and I can tell you this without hesitation: America taught the world to sing the gospel.

From the shape-note singing schools and travelling quartets of the South, to Fanny Crosby’s hymns, to Mahalia Jackson’s voice filling a stadium. From the Gaither Homecoming videos that found their way into homes on every continent, to Ernie Haase and Signature Sound carrying the quartet tradition to a new generation.

From Amy Grant, Vince Gill and Michael W. Smith taking faith into the mainstream, to the worship songs of the Vineyard that are now sung in churches from Brisbane to Beijing.

And Keith Green, the young pianist from California whose fire still burns in my own heart, who gave his albums away free because he believed the gospel should never be sold. I still sing his songs. I suspect I always will.

So keep going, America

Here’s what strikes me most about everything on this list. None of it was done by the government alone, or by famous people, or by the rich. It was done by ordinary believers in ordinary churches. Farmers and nurses and truck drivers and schoolteachers. Grandmothers packing shoeboxes. Retired men walking into prisons. Young couples flying across the world to bring home a child.

People just like you.

Jeff Daniels’ character was right about one thing: you can’t fix a problem until you’re honest about it. But the same is true of blessings. You can’t be thankful for them until someone points them out. So let this Australian point them out.

The world doesn’t always say thank you. The headlines rarely notice. But I see it, and I want you to know it matters. Every meal, every Bible, every prison visit, every song, every dollar in the plate. Jesus said He sees it too, and that what you have done for the least of these, you have done for Him.

So don’t grow weary. Keep sending. Keep giving. Keep visiting. Keep singing. Keep loving your neighbours and your enemies alike. The world is still watching that city on a hill, and from where I’m standing, the light is shining brightly.

“And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” (Galatians 6:9).

With love and gratitude from your Brother from Down Under,

Brother Greg

brothergreg.au