2020 has been a year of the roller coaster of events — the Donald Trump saga, the pandemic, George Floyd shooting and marches and the Black Lives Matter movement. A new President has offered to heal the nation and provide racial equity and justice.
However, we have torn down statues, defaced Civil War Confederacy sites, toppled Christopher Columbus statues, renamed streets and institutions, and have tried to rewrite history, claiming that Columbus had slaves, Thomas Jefferson had slaves, and in fact, most of the writers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights had slaves. For that, we are told they should be punished, and history should be rewritten to tell America how awful and terrible they really were. Roger Williams, the religious founder of Rhode Island owned slaves, yet christened what is today the town Providence and the liberties that few northeastern states then enjoyed. Confederate generals, like Stonewall Jackson, a true Christian believer, it is said should be castigated and thrown in the trash pile of history. Instead of learning from history, and all its mistakes and errors and missteps, we now trash history and rewrite history to sooth and satisfy guilty consciences and political correctness advocates.
Larry Arnn, president of conservative Hillsdale College in his article, Orwell's 1984 and Today (https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/orwells-1984-today/) notes that, like in Orwell's 1984, we have "Thought Police" roaming the halls of our newspapers and institutions of higher learning and even the halls of Congress itself to spy out "wrong" thinking and incorrect history and to put into our minds, and especially our children's minds, the "right" history. We want to forcefully change the past. We have discarded the law of contradiction that says we cannot change the past and that contradictory slogans, like those in Orwell's 1984, "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength," repeal what is and what was. Arnn writes — "American schoolchildren today learn two things about Thomas Jefferson: That he wrote the Declaration of Independence and that he was a slaveholder. This is a stunted and dishonest teaching about Jefferson." He goes on to note that what they do not learn is that Jefferson wanted the Northwest Territory to be eternally free of slavery. That he truly believed when he wrote that all men are created equal.
Yes, America forced out native Indians as we moved west and displaced native peoples for our own use and land grabs. Yes, Christian men and women owned slaves in the South. Yes, in World War Two, American Japanese peoples were sent to internment camps. Yes, Jim Crow laws abounded in many places in this country after the Civil War. This was all a travesty of human rights and just treatment for all peoples. To rewrite history, however, that it happened because people were evil, despotic thugs and that we should disown and separate ourselves from their writings and essays and speeches neglect fair and just reporting of all the facts about these men and women.
I am not an historian. I am a theologian and have written and spoken on historical theology. The present Black Lives Matter push reminds me of history trying to erase Who Jesus Christ really is and was. A number have tried to rewrite the New Testament of the Bible, trying to prove that Jesus was either not fully human or not fully God. They have fiddled with the text of the Bible, seeking to eliminate what Jesus said and did. All of these efforts have wilted in the clear record of religious and theological history. Jesus is and was fully man and fully God. To try to remake Jesus that is "acceptable" to modern ears has miserably failed, even with university secular professors constantly seeking to teach our young people differently about Jesus and Christianity. You either accept the Jesus of history or discard Him in favor of a fantasy Christ that soothes our sensibilities.
The Bible recognizes and deals with slavery. And the way it deals with slavery rankles many "Thought Police" today. What about slaves in the Apostle Paul's writings? “Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.” (Titus 2:9, 10; 1 Timothy 6:1, 2) The obvious question that comes up in these contexts is, Why doesn’t Paul just outrightly denounce and condemn slavery? There are actually several reasons for such neglect.
First, to denounce slavery might mean promotion of a slave revolt, while saying nothing would mean supporting the staus-quo. It would also mean or indicate that it would be permissible for Christian slaves to disobey their masters. This was evidently one of the problems in the Ephesian church (Ephesians 6:5–9). Slavery in Paul’s day was not limited to racial inequality, but people became slaves due to being prisoners of war, condemned criminals, debtors, kidnapping, or those sold into slavery by their parents. Slavery was a complicated social ill of the times and not easily resolved socially or politically, let alone theologically and practically. Moreover, Paul’s main concern in these letters is the cause of the gospel “. . . so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled.” (1 Timothy 6:1b)
While all people under Christ are free in Christ --“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28) -- one’s freedom in Christ cannot be used as a cloak for treating, in this case, one’s masters disrespectfully. Freedom in Christ does not permit disregarding one’s station in life, disobedience to lawful orders, or treating nonChristian authorities with disdain (cf. Mark 10:43–45; 1 Corinthians 9:19; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 6:5–9; Colossians 3:22–25). A more powerful and penetrating way to change and challenge inequality is to work from the grace of God from within outward. As Christian slaves gave their masters obedience and respect, and Christian masters gave fairness and kindness to their slaves, the institution could be changed from inside out. Real change begins in the heart and soul of a person, slave or free.
So, how would we rewrite this history except by deleting it from the Apostolic records? The Bible is not a political tool or a platform for any and every kind of movement declaring what we consider as unacceptable social norms. It is a record and declaration of the Gospel of Christ and the freedom, real inner freedom, it brings to those who bow before and under the rule of the Savior. While it has been, and continues to be, sadly and unfortunately used for political gain and movements, that is not it's intention.
The equality in Christ would become, in time, the force behind the abolition of the slave trade in the British empire under Wilberforce and the recognition of women as equal voters under Susan Anthony and others. The issues are vastly much more complicated than what the Black Lives Matter movement could ever imagine. Arnn writes, "The astounding thing, after all, is not that some of our Founders were slave-holders. There was a lot of slavery back then, as there has been for all of recorded time. The astounding thing--the miracle, even, one might say--is that these slave-holders founded a republic based on principles designed to abnegate slavery."
