Sins of an entire society
and their judgment
I've been thinking lately about the civil war lately. More about slavery, though. Yes, I know that the war itself and the reasons people fought to the death in it were mostly not about slavery. But in a spiritual sense, it most assuredly was, almost entirely, a consequence of the unrepentant sin of slavery that had continued to the point where any hope of repentance was gone. Sin gave birth.
It was, in a very real sense, a necessary tribulation of great suffering that this country went through in the civil war, and was equally important that the South had to suffer so much. Many, many genuine believers could not set aright in their own minds and hearts their views on the topic of slavery, being overwhelmed by the sad "necessity" that had generally become accepted of that institution. Intelligent and God-fearing people promoted the most ridiculous of rationalizations. I can imagine how easy it would be, if transported back in time, to preach on the biblical principles of how slavery -- if it were to exist at all -- should be managed by God's laws in order to be acceptable to God, how grossly perverted the American form of slavery had deviated from those principles, and how all who supported the continuance of the institution were siding with all the wrong sides in so many biblical stories, even competing with the worst of those bad examples of evil characters. But outside of a few abolitionists, whose movement apparently "lost" in the South during the earlier 1800's as people made up their minds on the mater, I don't think such preaching would have any effect other than to get the preacher "run outta town". Ok, I'm not a historian by any stretch; rather, I'm just thinking there is an analogy to be drawn here.
I think about how Pharaoh's heart was hardened -- and the result was that God could make His demonstration all the more transformative to all who would hear of it. I don't think Pharaoh himself is so much the issue as was Egypt and what God wanted to reveal using Egypt as a role in a play. Doesn't God just as well harden the heart of a nation as that of its leader? As Paul tells the Romans of such patterns -- "God gave them over to a depraved mind". It seems to me that this is also what happened even among His own people in the South during the mid 1800's. Hearts of many in the South had become equally hardened, even among the very people of otherwise strong faith. This is something like a "curse" on an entire sub-culture. I think God does that sometimes to allow what is evil to become apparent as truly evil -- so things have to get worse and more polarized in order for the evil to be purged so that the whole can be healed and restored. Its a drama at a national level more than the personal level.
I think there is an important lesson in there somewhere. Perhaps we are all equally guilty of hardening our hearts to the sins of our present-day culture, unwilling to expend any energy on a "lost cause", no matter how great its sadness (to which we only give lip service). 100 years after that war, the legacy of darkness in peoples hearts still flavored many of the influences I grew up with, even among family and church-goers that served as some of my best Christian examples in early childhood. That is a testimony to the lasting devastation of societal sin. When an oppressed people is kept down, then children both within and without will learn by generalization that there is something wrong with that people. I was exposed repeatedly to such ideas that "colored people just smell different, and to us white folks, it stinks." When the majority of "colored" people I encountered happened to be the poorest and most dejected in society, who didn't have hot water in their home and who therefore only rarely took a bath in the winter, then I would of course assume that this idea was true due to the "evidence" that I myself had experienced. It was "ok" to be served food by the black church custodian because -- well, after all, if you looked at his hands it was plain to see that all the black had come off through years of hard work -- they looked like a white man's hands. This was what I grew up with. I was never formally taught any of this; it was just what kids said, even older kids, and sometimes even adults. Only much later as an adult did I learn that my 1st grade class was the very first in which white and black were integrated into the same school -- I had not know that as a child. But the civil rights movement had brought change, finally, and what began as a seed continued to grow. Today's young generation probably cannot imagine the widespread and open prejudice and discrimination that was rampant when I was a child. When I visit my home town in the South now, it is a completely different world with respect to racial equity and integration -- I can assume there are still some issues, but it seems like a wonderful transformation to me.
As my years of schooling in an integrated environment allowed me to develop a more accurate understanding, and the learnings of adolescence and young adulthood allowed me to view my society's values more critically, I felt good to be breaking free from this racist nonsense. But even as a professional adult, I still noticed once when a black coworker handed me something to eat that I still had a thought from my earliest informal indoctrination -- a momentary idea of "taintedness" or "uncleanliness" of something touched by a black person. I was shocked and appalled that I would still have such a thought, even though of course I dismissed it as nonsense immediately, graciously accepting my coworker's offer. But that this concept would still linger in my subconscious after all these years left me feeling deeply ashamed. And so it is not hard to understand how the societal repression of an entire "race" was able to continue for over 100 years after they were set free from slavery.
But what of this present culture in America? Or in your own neck of the world, if that be somewhere else? What horrible sins are being rationalized and justified against the Spirit of God by our society today? Is there something as bad as America's former institution of slavery? Is there something worse? And what will be the consequences if it is not corrected? Will God give us over to a depraved mind with respect to that topic, hardening our hearts so that even the elect will be deceived? What great tribulation must we pass through to be purged of such evil? And what will someone say 100 years from now is still a legacy of damage from the sins of this generation? It's something to think about. And though I do have some initial thoughts on the matter, I'm not interested in debating the topic -- it's more for inward reflection right now. So I share the questions for whatever benefit you might find in them, though I am sharing all this fairly openly and somewhat carelessly with less attention to erudition than you might prefer.
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