Posted on 04/26/2008 10:05:15 AM PDT by stand_your_ground
A pattern is emerging in my reading of "then-versus-now."
When a series of 1770 colonial newspaper thefts are discovered, the publisher of the paper, (not the 18th century equivalent of an anonymous email poster) calls the perpetrators "mean, low-lived fellows," whose "souls" were not "large enough to be at the trifling expense of a News Paper."
When the British parliament lays an illegal tax on British North America, the little town of Exeter New Hampshire, in the officially stated will of the town, doesn't pull any punches in calling the customs officials: "...miscreants, who devour the fruits of our honest industry.."
In the aftermath of the Boston Massacre, the patriot Joseph Warren warned those responsible for quartering troops in Boston that although they had escaped earthly justice, they should nevertheless "...be prepared to stand at the bar of an omniscient Judge!"
When Justices of the Peace in 1820s New Hampshire were taught the form of a complaint against treason, they were reminded of one "John Burr," who had no "fear of God in his heart," but was "seduced by the instigation of the Devil.."
Wrong doers, in other words, were "mean," "low-lived," "small-souled," "mis-creants," who were "seduced by the Devil" and who conducted their lives as though they would never stand before an eternal "omniscient Judge!"
A few months ago, I was reminded, via Court TV, of the gruesome case of the Carr Brothers, who committed such brutally hateful acts of violence, rape, and assault that they make the British occupiers of 1770 look like Marsha, Jan, and Cindy Brady. Our prisons, to make things worse, are full of brutal reptiles like this, who are enjoying state meals while the expensive apparatus of value-free justice grinds on, and although there are small bursts of outrage here and there, like campfires across a wide prairie, the bonfires of justice remain unlit, and the gallows are never hammered together. "Low-lived" scum have become, simply, "perpetrators." No major American newspaper, and certainly no legal proceeding, would ever dare to say that villains like the Carr Brothers were acting on an impulse that most Americans, still, find far more plausible than the tepid ruminations of social scientists, and that is, that these jackals were "seduced by the instigation of the Devil." When one recent Islamo-fascist attack took place in England, and it was discovered that nearly all the terrorists were well to do medical professionals, it's difficult to believe that crime is the mere result of mismanaged food-stamp programs.
In the argument over how much Christianity affected the formation of the American republic, the topic is blurred by an academic elite who see Christians in history as merely televangelists in tricorns. The temptation is to paint the founders with the sort of anemic, seeker-friendly psycho-spiritual blather of a Robert Schuller, but the Christianity of the past, in America was pastoral. The image is that of a shepherd, protecting and feeding the flock--and clubbing the wolves to death.
On the contrary, Christianity of the present age, very clearly, is burdened by the twin heresies of cheap mercy and the primacy of an ecstatic worship experience. Another way of putting this is to say, plainly, that the faith of our fathers had a heck of a lot more testosterone. Imagine St. Peter for a moment, quick to pull a knife on the enemies of Christ, or Christ himself telling the disciples to sell their cloak and buy a sword. Imagine Billy Graham storming into the temple and turning over the tables of the money changers or calling his spiritual enemies "vipers" and "white washed tombs." Odds are, in the current age of the church, the average believer finds these passages too uncomfortable to contemplate, in favor of the many balancing passages that advocate passivity. The fact is, however, that Christ is not Ghandi, nor was He ever. The power of Christianity is that it was then, and is now, real, complete, and perfectly able to address the flawed state of the world. To turn it into an anger management group hug, or into the sort of moral relativism that has impoverished most of the world, is to make it as intellectually shallow as today's pundits.
Odds are that most Christians don't know much more than the passage "judge not that ye be not judged." They are less likely to quote "if your brother sins, REBUKE him," or "the ruler beareth not the sword in vain,", or "them that sin rebuke before all." In fact the Christianity of today is something like entering a Marine Boot Camp and finding out Elton John is your drill instructor. You may get your uniform, but you aren't going to be a Marine by mastering floral arrangement. Being a Christian, after all, has historically meant being angry at sin, and getting really mad, on occasion, when the world succumbs to it.
That tradition, in America, created a high sense of justice. Newspaper publishers had an audience for the notion that thieves had "small souls," and treason was the work of the devil. Now, we can't even bring ourselves to execute, on a timely basis, some of the vermin sitting on death row, and freeing up a little space in the sewer for more of the human garbage cluttering our children's world. The church today, in other words, is calling cowardice "love," and failing to remind Christians that they need to be on a war footing against wrong-doing. In the colonies, that applied to something as small as stealing a newspaper. Now we can't even bring ourselves to scorch the ears (much less the hides) of murderers.
And strangely enough, we are substituting things like diet and tea-totaling and non-movie going and asexuality as signs of regeneration. Some of these Christians today would chide Christ for turning the water into wine at Cana, or Solomon for writing the Song of Songs, or St. Paul for being a little insensitive. John MacArthur, the darling of many bible-believers, even chided the founders for rebelling against wicked King George and his ministers.
Give me a church of men who brag about their beautiful wives, who work hard to feed (and teach) the poor, who like good wine, great music, story-telling, and who know how to shoot!
Christianity shouldn't put you to sleep.
The founders were awake to injustice. Why aren't we?
Moral Relativism.
Bravo!!!!!! Excellent thread, very very well stated. I am often called “extreme”, or “black and white” (hence my NoGrayZone name)because I fall along the same line of thinking as you do, and apparently, as did our Founding Fathers and their fellow Americans.
If more of us started to be a little more “extreme” perhaps we can get Him back into society, although according to the Bible, we will not be accomplishing that dream.
But we still must try.
The founders came from a time when a person either progressed or failed depending on their accomplishments, where the act of succeeding and doing so at whatever pursuit deemed good was cause for respect and not disdain because you had accomplished something--because you did it with the help of God, and perhaps your family and some friends, not a government edict which said you would succeed.
It was routine to carve a farm out of wilderness, use the trees to build what you needed and for heat/cooking, and feed one's family with that farm, not be held as a criminal for cutting down a tree.
And where, aside from the Christian charity of your neighbors, there was no safety net in times of disaster, so you treated your neighbors in good times and bad as you wanted to be treated.
To be sure there were exceptions, but there was the opportunity to prosper by the sweat of your brow and not have the fruits of that labor forcibly removed from you to support those who would not labor.
While looking to God for a sense of moral sensibilities was part of that sensitivity to injustice, so was looking down at the calloused hands God had helped you build your prosperity with.
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