Ancient Israel made banners to carry in front of them. A banner is a flag. Psalms 20:5 says "We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of our God we will set up banners" and Psalms 60:4 says "thou hast given a banner to those that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the Truth." Obviously God and the Israelites knew they were not "idolizing" a flag. Watchtower uses "idolizing" as a mind congtrol word to inflict unnecessary guilt for the members to feel they are always doing wrong. I remember hearing talks about not letting your children hang posters in thier room of favored rock stars or Tv personalities. This was carried so far that some even believed Mickey Mouse was an Idol to be avoided. Put in perspective, I personally feel that saluting the flag, standing up for it, and singing patriotic songs are acts displaying respect for the representation of our homeland. Like our own home, we love it and want to feel safe and protected in it and would protect our home against thieves and murderers to our family. It is the same with the country we live in. It is the land our children are growing up in, and th land that we worship our God in. There are so many things about our land, like our home, that we take pride in. It is home sweet home when we come back from a visit to another country. I remember a couple of weeks ago coming back from the Bahama's that I felt that even though I enjoyed the vacation, I felt good to be "home". I don't "worship" my country, that I call home, and I don't "worship" the representation of the emblem or banner. It is the same with flags of decorative pictures some hang in front of thier house. My husband had at one time wanted to put a banner with a picture of a labradore retriever on it. We have two labs and this is a representative a the breed we have and love. But certainly we do not "worship" the dog. I think, like the Psalms brings out about the Israelites carrying thier banner, human beings tend to want to "symbolize" their things that are dear to them. I am really looking at this in a new perspective after being a JW for 30 years. It is a good feeling to use my conscience in a personal way now. My conscience doesn't move me to avoid the flag. Yet, their was an incident that occured between us and our neighbor. Their 2 Jack Russell Terriers came in our yard and literally ripped apart and killed our beloved cat we had for 22 years. There was blood all over the back yard where we found him. It was horrible and for weeks and months following, I had fantasies of harming these two dogs for what they had done to our beloved cat. I imagined all kinds of ways to harm them. Poison, drowning, catching and dumping them far away. But after thinking such thought and wanting to do them, I would realize that my conscience would never ever allow me to take an action like that and would never want to answer to God for that action against one of his creatures.(even though I hate the damned dogs). It just feels so good to have that freedom now to excersize my own conscience without the stupid WT deciding what is good and bad. I know in my deep down gut what seems not ok with God. I don't think he cares about a flag, but how our actions towards others of his creation are what counts. Well, I've rambled too much. I may go out and buy a flag, if I can get the JW scare messages out of my brain:)