The children and I have been studying Colonial America, the 30 Years War in Europe, and the drastic swing of power between the Puritans and the Royalists in England; back and forth, back and forth, ba- well, I think you get the picture. With each change of power a new wave of people sail for America in hope of a new start. The Royalists head for Virginia, the Puritans for New England.
As we study I continue to place a mental transparency sheet over what we’re studying from then that details today. We’ve become so polarized that the far left cries for socialism while the far right is wants a Christian government and I am baffled at how quickly we have forgotten our not-so-distant past. Will you humor me and re-walk history for the next several paragraphs?
The scene is Colonial America where every settlement is self-governed, though many know nothing of the concept of tolerance. With the exception of Queen Elizabeth’s reign (where tolerance was based on her character rather than the government) they’ve simply never seen it done before. (Interesting side note: some of the Native American tribes were practicing forms of democracy, however.) The history the European mind understands at this time works like this: one nation/dictator/aristocracy overtakes another and the reigning power’s religion is pressed on citizens by force used as a tool to control and grow that power. This is their consistent history... and not just in Europe but in Asia and Africa, too.
Examples: China had royal families, “dynasties,” that ruled for generations while Egypt had its Pharaohs. Eventually England, Scotland, Spain, and you-name-it would also have ruling aristocracies. Prior to the aristocracies, there was the whole “invade and conquer” mentality with land switching from the rule of one nation to the rule of another and the remnants of people intermingled and pressed to submit to the reigning power’s religion.
One of the earliest great nations demanded Caesar be considered god-like: the Roman empire. It expanded and gave an illusion of peace and lasting security but in the end, even it fell. Barbarians, Vikings, Mongols, Anglo Saxons and other tribes and nations were infiltrating and spreading and conquering... Muslim Africans were attempting to expand their land and religious rule and spread North. Spain resisted and fought back and forced conversion to Catholicism (Ferdinand and Isabella)... the Crusades commenced... religions, cultures, nations at war... war, war, war... this is the story of their world.
To dream of a nation where religion and government are not one in the same is simply not in their frame of reference. For these Colonial minds, aristocracy has always been their best bet for peace and security without being overrun by another nation... after all it worked very well during the Elizabethan Era when there was this sense of strong security, unprecedented tolerance, and national pride. With so much war and uncertainty beyond their borders, many were willing to count the cost of an aristocracy for the sake of peace... but what came just as quickly as the great Elizabeth were the Reformation and the rule of James I when unrest grew from within.
The printing press had been invented and information was circulating like never before. The Bible was printed in English and as it began to circulate, and with the independent reading of It, came atrocity and horror at the ways it had been misrepresented by the Catholic church leaders, the Anglican Church leaders, and the government. Martin Luther’s bravery gave inspiration and courage to those also troubled by the falsehoods and inconsistencies. (On a side note, I find it no coincidence that the Lord appointed Martin Luther’s place in time parallel with Gutenberg’s, creator of the printing press.) And so Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door and also, it seemed, the Dark Ages there with it, left for dead.
Old beliefs inhaled new breath in Europe and people were seeking personal dependence upon, and relationship with, God; simpler purer than before... a church much more reminiscent of the early church in the Middle East. God, (consider there is One,) could have been said to have always preserved and protected a remnant. Even in the Dark Ages, there were always a remnant. Even after the fall of Israel in the Old Testament, there were always a remnant... And to these, their religion wasn’t a list of government-enforced laws; it was alive, soft like the flesh of human lungs, and moving the same, in and out, in and out; a living, sacred thing. Their religion was not the only thing to come alive, but so were their minds and they would no longer tolerate the abuse of their Book nor the aristocracies who misrepresented it. For this stand they were persecuted, hated, and brutally killed.
You have heard many talk about how the church and Christian governments brutally murdered and warred other nations and individuals for years in the name of Christ, but few will highlight that the European church was one based on government and a book no one was able to read, and many neglect to consider that perhaps Europe’s church, the Roman Catholic church of that day, and the King of England’s Anglican church, were by no means God’s church... and what a small and partial concept of God these critics entertain.
Let’s consider this a moment. If there were a sovereign God, would His church be so simply defined by what we call it? If I have a defect, say I’m color-blind, and I call something green, does that make it green? (Though wouldn’t perversion be a wonderfully convenient twist if this God were to have an enemy?) An enemy of the authentic church (the Bible claims there is an enemy) would gladly take our defects, both personal and systematic (the Bible claims there is a sinful nature at work in the world) and toss them together in a drink shaker bringing to fruition the lovely little cocktail that was the European church of that day. The authentic church and its beliefs, the church started through Peter and Paul and countless others, would be something very different from the one the government and rulers of the day called the church. The authentic church would have no purpose with earthly government (the Bible claims this approach) much like the underground Chinese churches of today.
This is the stuff that anti-Christians love to rub their hands together and drool over: the horrors done in the name of Christ. Okay, but say it were real, the Bible. Then using Christ’s name for evil makes perfect sense, not less. The irony is, these people who love to think... who worship their ability to think, who allow their thinking to hinder their faith... are acting extremely ignorant in trying to call Christians inconsistent by pointing to a government infiltrated religion of old. What you have there is not an evil religion, it is an evil power. When someone is claiming to follow a teacher and living opposite of the teaching of that teacher do you blame the teacher? No, you blame the student. Does it make the teaching less true? No. That’s absurd. People are quick to say this about Islam; that Islam is generally a peaceful religion where some have gone wayward. The irony is that Islam is a violent religion by the book. Those practicing it peacefully are actually not authentic Muslims. You can read about a happening today that affirms this fact here. Whereas Christianity, which is never given this point, is based on commissions to protect the weak, and to nurture, love, and bless all... even one’s enemy. Defining what love is would be another topic entirely, but it’s based on loving the unlovely, loving and respecting all cultures and nations, both Jew and Gentile, and even the Old Testament has a running theme of the Israelites being blessed in order to be a blessing to others.
While atrocities in the name of Christ by evil people are magnified, what are hidden, denied and shrunk are the brutal murders and martyrdom that took place post-Reformation in Europe for those who wanted to purify “the church” and moreover the ones who were clever enough to not call it the church at all; who became Separatists but that came at a high price: pastors, women, children brutally murdered by the thousands. (Furthermore this is going on as much today as ever.) Individual lives, take an 18 year old girl, Margaret Wilson, who was tied to a stake and read Romans 8 while the tidal waters engulfed her and a soldier plunged her under and commanded her soul to hell. Do you remember hearing of these things in your history classes? Oh wait... you didn’t? Seems that would be a more balanced education, but even our education is partial today. The point is that if so-called “Christianity” was abusing authentic Christianity, then one of the two (not the both) is false. It was wise advice to throw the baby out with the bathwater (which is precisely what’s happening in a sad and literal way.)
But enough of church defense and apologetics because this is where history gets interesting as we start to see today in the story... we start to see the desperate yearning for separation of church and state still today... we start to see where many today, both far right and left, are looking to the government to overstep its bounds; to be God in one way or another. If you have no God, then this makes sense (though its never worked before.) Where else can you turn by the government to promote peace and healing? But I am disappointed that those who do worship choose to ask the government to be a conscience for the people... so think on today as we continue our walk with the new colonists...
With all of the European strife much due to the terrifying blend of church and state, people were gathering courage from the most remote parts of their being in order to maintain their beliefs in such a land... why would they be afraid, then, to cross the ocean and find a fresh start? Well, they wouldn’t. And they weren’t.
It was the early 1600’s and Jamestown had survived, (barely, by way of John Rolfe’s tobacco and with the purpose of economic gain,) but they had survived and paved the way... and the Puritans are next on the boat. And then not just the English, but over time, the Royalists, then the Catholics... the Dutch and also the French are all venturing on over to the land of possibilities. Some are mistreating, abusing and tricking the Native Americans into unfair land purchases, yes. (This was what people, clans, pools who thought alike had done for centuries and centuries... they took land from each other trying to find a place for order and peace for them and their people and their way....) The pattern doesn’t make it right, it doesn’t make it good... but it is the general way of things at that time; it is the only way they know.
The real miracle is that not all who arrive have such a sense of entitlement. There are those (take Roger Williams) who are befriending and respecting the Native American people; purchasing land honestly instead of seizing or cheating it, and making no demands for cultural or religious change on anyone who lives there: all are welcome, all may live in harmony.
The old way of things won’t last for long because this is the beginning of a wonderful domino effect. The new colonies forming are all self-governed, as well. Many begin to separate religion and colony rules, and colonies in Rhode Island, Maryland, Connecticut, and New York will tolerate each other and choose to welcome all and live peaceably together. Others (take Massachusetts Bay Colony) will not. The colonists (and Native Americans for that matter) are people acting like people. They are not “good” Native Americans and “bad” Europeans. They are people; some evil, some loving.
The Native Americans think about things differently because they haven’t yet been forced into seeing land as something to be owned and hoarded as the Europeans learned with the development of the feudal system. There is so much land in America! It is shared and used and belongs to no one. Certainly the tribes had warred over hunting and fishing territories, and larger tribes often bullied smaller, weaker ones... but generally they understand and respect the other’s territories and see land as something shared and used, not owned. They certainly don’t each mark off their own plot of land with a palisade, plop a permanent home on it, and tell everyone else to buzz off. On the contrary, the Europeans have come to think of land you can call your own precious and nearly sacred. They think it means freedom... but as things go, unchecked freedom quickly turns to greed.
A struggle begins. Some of the very Puritans who left England to avoid persecution are turning around and persecuting those who dnn’t agree with them in America. It’s like the parable Jesus tells about a man who, after being forgiven for a lifetime’s wages worth of debt turns around and hounds someone for a very small one. This is hypocrisy, and it likely grows from a root of fear: If these people disagree with what we believe it will be just like back in England and we will be persecuted again. They are panicked, some of them... they act out of fear instead of love and make laws to soothe their fears and punish those who speak against them in an effort to control and tame. But if there is a God, you might say it is in His providence that these tensions arise because it is from them that Providence, Rhode Island is born via Roger Williams. Providence is open and welcome to all, though founded by a Christ-following Christian who, years later, is called to the deathbed of a dear Native American Chief and close friend.
This is a great example for us today: to seek to control the orientation of a person’s heart is not only wrong, it is impossible. It is from this impossibility that the need for separation of church and state is realized among early Americans. Slowly but surely the colonists are thinking new thoughts... creeping still further and further away from Europe. Anything is possible in America and just maybe they can find a way to live in peace and worship freely for good.
The new concept, the new vocabulary word, is tolerance. Without it, a nation’s people are not truly free. Without freedom, you cannot choose. Without choice, you cannot worship.
Again, we are talking about today as much as yesterday. Understand that tolerance (and with it, equality,) needed to keep on swinging right through the Civil Rights era. It most definitely did. But if an object is allowed to swing far enough, it ends up coming full circle. (At least I think it does. I dropped out of physics so I can’t be sure.) But What I’m suggesting is that tolerance can be taken too far. Think on it... can the word itself lose its meaning?
I think it can, and I think we are seeing the grievous effects of that in our country today; of a pendulum swung so far that the concept has lost meaning or purpose. Or perhaps even gained a new purpose much like the corrupt church had. For example, we clearly cannot tolerate murder. We cannot tolerate theft. This would be “tolerance” we want nothing to do with. If my freedom is carried out to the point of murder, then my freedom has taken away the freedom of another and tolerance has gone too far. If tolerance tolerates some and not others, helps some and hurts others, than it is no longer tolerance but partiality which is inequality, which is why our system kept adjusting on through to Civil Rights, thank the Lord! Once we recovered from the Revolutionary war, and every 100 or so years, corrections and revisions were made in our country to promote authentic freedom and equality. But I would argue that tolerance has a limit or it ceases to mean anything.
These are my thoughts as I study the making of an environment so ripe for a Revolutionary War, a Constitution formed, and the official separation of church and state, but apparently I am not the only one thinking them. Yesterday my seven-year-old daughter was tossing similar notions around in her head when she asked with frustration: “so... why do we really HAVE to have a government at all?” She rightly (as children are so effortlessly good at) blamed not God but man, and man’s institutions for the strife we were reading about. Just seemed like a whole lot of trouble to her.
Why have government? No kidding. It can sure feel like that at times.
Why? I’m forced to answer: because if tolerance is taken to an extreme where it’s every man for himself and every man unaccountable, then it becomes lawlessness. And lawlessness we cannot have. (I once met a missionary people who had almost made themselves extinct on account of their lawlessness and resulting violence.) Clearly, we must have laws to protect our freedom, our right to live freely and safely in a community.
The great thing about America, as we all know, is that even though we have government, the people are in charge. (I think?) Well, we’re supposed to be, anyway. The constitution says so. Ironically, the people keep voting against themselves. But it was the promotion of freedom that we emerged a... (hear animated Comic Book Cartoon music)... SUPERPOWER! And we have become an amazing place, created amazing things, and lived wonderful stories of rags to riches... so much so, that there is this idea we refer to called “The American Dream.” Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I love that we say the pursuit of happiness. You can’t have the freedom to succeed without also having the freedom to fail. Side note: The God of the Bible granted His creation freedom and Adam and Eve failed so He had to succeed in their place. The problem is, the government is run by men, not God. We have to remember this, and unless it’s sole purpose is to protect freedom and life (no matter what side of the womb) it will fail.
It is odd to me, that instead of finding our country impenetrable and resilient after reading all of this history, I am finding myself solemn; sobered. Maybe even a little sad. The government’s success really depends on the people of the land and the orientation of their hearts, and that is something over which the government cannot (and should not try to) control.
We are a young country... we might fall yet. From implosion.
Before you sneer and call me dramatic, what I mean is... Rome had a great run and didn’t see a fall in their future... Amazing Rome... intelligent minds, education, art, militant security, leisure, luxury and wealth... the latest technology; sewers, roads, and theaters. We would be arrogant to think that our government or even our constitution is enough, to accept our government as the solution, the answer, the means by which salvation comes. No one really knows the future and no nation is impenetrable.
We puff out our chests and hold high our heads while spending 10 billion a year on pornography and adult entertainment, have a 50% divorce rate, and kill 3,700 babies a day. We stand and watch a rocket leave the planet over our heads with our 200 dollar shoes on the ground while reading breaking news from an earthquake’s epicenter on our iphones and think ‘even God Himself (if there were a God) couldn’t sink this ship.’ Careful... Careful.
What is happening? I would suggest that we are our own worst enemy; self-destructing faster than we want to believe. What we want is no longer freedom. Freedom is no longer enough. We have forgotten what the word meant to those first pioneers to come to a new shore... not the money-making slave owners in Jamestown... but those other people, people like Roger Williams. Today, we are bored and weary from pleasure so we run our mouths and feed our whims and pat ourselves on the back because, well, aren’t we brilliant? But we are ungrateful. We are ungrateful to those who came before, to those who gave their lives. We give them lip service but are words are empty. We are a spoiled, self-destructive people. So what we ask of the law, of the government, is for affirmation that we are not doing anything wrong. We want someone to officially say, to write out a proclamation that says “you’re okay, I’m okay, do what makes you happy and there is no cost.” And we get away with that because sometimes the cost is silent. The cry of the violated is silent.
It’s not enough to be free to practice homosexuality... we want it to be called marriage and we act as if this injustice is the same as being without a well in Africa. It’s not enough to be able to opt out of parenthood via adoption, we want to end the life itself and wipe it away as though it never happened. We had rights, we had equality... but what we now demand in America from our government is a lobotomy for our conscience that comes by way of the law.
If we accept the delusion that giving our people “tolerance” to the degree of hurting others will somehow make us a free country, we are failing. Hurting others and doing what’s easy, what’s convenient for one but not another is lawlessness. That is not tolerance, that is partiality. Lawlessness and partiality always end in shackles. Always.
We magnify our lusts and call them needs. We mock the ancient virtues of selflessness and sacrifice and rename them oppression and inequality. We play with words and give them new meanings. We call evil good and good evil.
I fear we are becoming a nation of spoiled brats; a thankless, self-pitying nation. Instead of loving each other enough to say the hard stuff, to set high standards, to demand accountability for wrong actions... to ask for character in spite of tribulation... we lick each other’s wounds and enable selfish, small thinking. We are a people of forked tongues and lost hearts. We won’t call God God because we don’t like His rules and we don’t like His ways so we exchange the law that brings perfect freedom for a lie, and worship created things rather than the Creator himself. This leaves us with a few problems but we have no God to call God, so we call the government god and attempt to use it to make life cushy but the reality is we are somehow both wealthy and bankrupt, both our economy and our hearts.
The government’s purpose is not to soothe your conscience, declare you morally a-okay in the eyes of others, or spend the country’s money or play Santa Claus and redistribute wealth to grow big problems into bigger ones because we’re more interested in fantastical Utopias (that would only work with perfect people) than in dealing with what actually “is,” because we would rather invest financially and fail then do the hard, personal investment and community it takes to succeed. We want the short cut and fail to see the drop-off at the end.
Salvation only comes one way and it’s not by government. I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m insisting it doesn’t work. It never has because it’s lacking one thing: perfect human beings. Human beings, given all the things they could want or need in this world, will still hurt other people and serve Self over others at the end of the day. You can’t control the person by forced religion, no... but not by bribery, either.
I appeal not to your morality in these arguments, I appeal to your logic. Now let’s be very specific: if we don’t have the right to survive the womb and arrive on this green earth, then we don’t have freedom in this country. It is no longer a free land. There is no side-stepping that. If you can’t count on being born, you are not free: this is the first right: the right to life. Just because a person occupies a different place in time does not make them less of a person. It is ludicrous and laughable to pretend any other rights deserve our passion if we can’t even get every life here to begin with.
Looking at this problem on a small, personal scale: these babies suffer. If you don’t realize that, then I dare you to watch some videos my husband has and walk away without realizing it. (I personally won’t watch them because I don’t need to; I’ve felt five different personalities move inside of me, I’ve seen the heartbeat the size of a pencil point, I get it.) But so many people dismiss life as a lump of cells and call murder a procedure. This is sick. I don’t care if you’re a Christian or an atheist, this is sick. What we have in this “land of freedom” is an unseen mass grave.
The real horror- the real tragedy, despite the suffering these babies undergo physically- is that these mothers have lost an opportunity to do something heroic; to bear fruit in the midst of a drought, to bring joy from suffering, to bless someone else who is yearning for a baby to love, to do the right thing in a world of wrong, to defend someone smaller as they should’ve been defended, to repay evil with kindness. Instead of being blessed by that experience, encouraged and helped and taken care of, invested in, they have been offered an indifferent, impersonal, less committed, much simpler approach: just get rid of it. Make it disappear.
We fail to realize that beauty can grow out of ashes and we are robbing our world of so many possibilities in each of these. We are robbing ourselves on so many levels. Look at all the beautiful lives that have come from tragic beginnings in our past and consider.
I don’t expect people who regard no Moral Law Giver to want a moral law, but I would appeal to their logic and suggest that some things are being made into laws that are actually suppressing, not promoting, freedom. Other things are being made into laws that don’t have to be made into a LAW in order to insure equality or freedom which is abusing the purpose of the law. This is dangerous tweaking. We were a free people. We were free to practice whatever kind of lifestyles we wanted unless we were violating the lives of others. When did this cease to be enough? When did it become okay to violate others to call ourselves free? When did we insist on laws that aren’t needed to call ourselves equal?
The laws of the land should all point toward and seek to do one thing, no less and no more: foster and protect our God-given freedom; to worship, to vote, to learn, to try, to fail, to live with the same gender or the opposite, to opt out of parenthood or to parent. I would not desire the government to change these things for the same reason God himself did force worship, but instead gave choice. We take away the right to live and we have not granted but taken away choice and redefined the word to mean partiality. Read that again. We have taken away the right to choose. If we have no right to be born, then we have no right to choose, and then we have no freedom. There is an agenda at work... but it is not the one we were founded on. It is one of old. The kind that never lasted.
We vote for what we believe in, we care about our country, government, land... but true change takes place on the streets and in the workplaces and in the businesses and in the homes and churches, not in Congress. What our country needs is revival among the people’s hearts and mind.
The encouraging thing is that the authentic church cannot be stopped. You can take away a citizen’s legal freedom and send our country to the gutter, but the church will worship despite persecution. It has never failed. There is always a remnant. Look across the ocean, look to China. The government is big, choice is small, but God is Supreme. Take comfort, you cannot change God. When people’s freedom is oppressed and the government won’t listen, guess where they end up turning? And God always hears and inhabits the cries of His people. Wherever people are oppressed, there is an uprising of the Spirit; take African American slavery for example, and praise God that when the government was far, cold, and silent, He was near, warm and loud. You cannot confine or contain Him no matter what the law of the land. His plan will not be thwarted and of His government there will be no end.
