However Incrementally, However Slowly

Recently, our nations’ founders, the documents they authored, and the nation they established have been demeaningly labeled as racist. Many who so malign the USA point to indisputable truths such as the majority, around three quarters, of the writers of the Declaration of Independence and around one half of the writers of the Constitution being slave owners. This is enough for many today to condemn the founders of our country and accuse them as a racist lot. Some time back I listened to a historian ponder something I too had mulled: The thing more astonishing than many of America’s founders espousing and writing documents declaring freedom yet owning slaves is that many of these slave-owner founders made great sacrifices, some even giving their lives, fighting for the liberty of all. They owned slaves but fought for freedom for all folks. In defense of the founders, it is not enough simply to state the obvious: They were a product of their times. No, the anomaly of promulgaters of liberty being slave owners cries out for explanation. To me, there are two general explanations: Hypocrisy or Development. The founders were either bold hypocrites to espouse liberty for all and yet own slaves, or the founders (along with the nation they founded) were experiencing, instigating, and involved in development towards liberty for all. Development is a process that happens by degrees. Some were indisputably hypocrites whether they recognized or ever acknowledged it. But, overall, the founders and the nation they founded were developing. However incrementally. However slowly. It is a lie our nation was founded in racism and, thus, by nature is racist. Though some of the founders and future citizens were racist, our nation was founded on principles that ensured that over time it would grow and develop into a place where there was liberty for all. Freedom for all was inherent, boldly woven into the fabric of the documents and the nation they founded—and the founders were the weavers. Many of the writers were aware that, though concessions were made to encourage slave-holding states to join the union, they were writing documents that would over time, as the nation developed and grew, result in liberty for all its citizens. But before I get too far into that, let me return to this proposition: What the founders did as a group or as individuals was either hypocrisy or development. The same charge of “hypocrisy” is often made when Christians do not live up to the Truth and standards they espouse. Make no mistake. Some Christians are hypocrites. They say they believe the Truth as set forth in the Word, they say they believe in the Gospel, but their lives are completely out of kilter with that Truth. Other Christians truly do believe and seek to measure up to those things set down by Scripture, yet, their lives fall short, many times drastically so. They are not hypocrites. They are developing. They are undergoing a process of transformation. They are being, as we used to say, and Scripture still labels it, being sanctified. However incrementally. However slowly. Thus, whether nation or church or individual Christian the standard used to judge should not be perfection but direction. Something, not perfect but headed in the right direction is developing. The founding of our nation was not perfect. The founders themselves were not. Yet, the direction they plotted and routed in their founding documents, the direction of their desire and intent was the direction of freedom for all. And, that is the direction our nation has progressively gone, despite set-backs, and pitfalls. Though still not perfect, our nation enjoys more freedom for more people of any nation in the world today or in history. Whatever the racism of some at its founding, whatever problems it has since had, it was founded on principles that assured its development into freedom for all. However incrementally. However slowly. Many have the same problem with what they read in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. Cynical skeptics point out that God’s people whose lives are chronicled in Scripture owned slaves (actually servants), practiced polygamy, oppressed women, etc. Some of the charges are not true. But some are: Abraham married a half-sister. Jacob was a polygamist. Jonah was a blatant racist. Etc. Theirs was not a perfect world. They were not perfect people. Yet, they had responded to God’s call. God began with them wherever He found them and whatever shape they were in and moved them in the right direction. They followed. He called them out of their native corrupt culture and began a process of making and developing them into what He would have them be as individuals and as a people. However incrementally. However slowly. This truth has solidified into a word of encouragement that I have often given to folks who believe they have messed up too badly, are too far entangled and embedded in a godless lifestyle, and have strayed too far. I say to them, “God does not start with us where we SHOULD be or COULD be. God starts with us where we are right here, right now—if we only turn repentantly to Him.” I also follow with, “And, He can take us from right here, right now, to where we should and could be.” He moves us in the right direction. He develops us. However incrementally. However slowly. This truth of not being perfect, not living up to the ideal but of being headed in the right direction, being in the process of development, helps both encourage and warn us. Personally, I believe that our nation has made a U-turn in its progression in the direction of liberty. It has turned in the direction of socialism, the suppression of individual liberties, and the animosity towards the free practice of religion. Those who espouse this direction ARE hypocrites to speak of liberty. Their tirades, machinations, philosophies are NOT continuing the development to a “more perfect union” with liberty and just for all. They have turned our nation in a direction of the declension of liberty and the destruction of our nation—and not incrementally, not slowly! One may not be perfect but he can be headed the right direction. One may not be perfect but his life need not be one of hypocrisy but development: And, wherever you are at right here, right now, God can take you from right here, right now, to where you should and could be. However, incrementally. However, slowly. --Pastor Clifford Hurst