The Bible and history show basic human issues have been repetitive. Approaching Civil War in America, most Christian communities in northern states ultimately registered repugnance to the peculiar institution of slavery. Insightful secularists were also activists on the issue. The issue had simmered until the Supreme Court decided that law protected the rights of owners to their property. Slaves were interpreted as property. Even Daniel Webster, though sympathetic to the non-slavery movement, agreed that the law was upheld. By laws of the time, Webster was correct. By emerging public morality at the time, he was in error. His agreement with the court impacted his reputation negatively. John Brown resisted the law, believing Scripture was primary and anti-slavery in teaching. Brown and others were willing to fight. Brown died on the gallows for his armed resistance. (Currently, debates over other issues bear similar vituperation among voters and leaders as did the slavery issue. Feelings run deep, sometimes distorting objectivity.)
Scripture does not support slavery, commanding firmly against it. One of the early sins of Israel on return from Babylon was the sale of children into slavery. No poverty of a family justified such practice. Moses had been specific about the matter, offering more to the escaped slave than might have been available to Israelites themselves. It was considered a dark time when all of Israel was held in Egypt as slaves. Moses and God were credited for leading the nation out of slavery. Moses was emancipator of Israel as Lincoln was for the African-American in slave states. Freedom was, and is, important to the plan of God. Each person is to be free to make personal determination, under God, to believe through his/her own independent decision and become what God means for the individual to be and become. The message of salvation is related to the right of an individual to make life decisions, and take on responsibility to mankind and God. To mankind it is equality, to God truth in righteousness from his holy nature. To both, love.
What remains to be done, in the 21st Century, to settle the nagging irritations in society that repeatedly come up related to that former peculiar institution? Slavery officially ended in all states in 1865. The answer for reconstruction is forgiveness – Lincoln’s point under God. Of whatever race, modern man cannot take on responsibility for the social guilt or honor of previous generations. Each generation is its own, but with an inherited past and future – with primary responsibility for its present. There are enough problems, sins, tragedies, errors of our own making that we need to address, than to try to even past scores. Those scores are in the hands of God. We ought to avoid repetition of wrongs. The past is too fraught with non-sequiturs for us, and a chain of logic that never ends for guilt. Minority people, lacking equality rights, might gain advancement on a massive scale, by forgiveness of past inequities and cruelties, and move forward addressing one’s own generation, and context of life – reaching for humane and godly ideals.
Those who have done that from backgrounds of Africa, Asia, Native Peoples, and women as well, have more and more of the rights, privileges and freedom of all citizens. If I were a part of a segment that has survived against prejudicial barriers, I would either forgive and get on, or drop the subject to clear the decks so as not to waste my life on former inequities. I would not wish to regurgitate past wrongs – personal or social. Persons may be shackled by past evils. God’s emancipation to freedom is found in forgiveness. Here is understanding that leads to balance, to dilution of prejudice, and to peace rewarded in the grace of God. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020