God has opinions about human affairs, but His opinions are not easy for any human to see.
Abraham Lincoln faced the Civil War, the greatest test the American Republic has endured, but he was not foolish enough to assume the government was on God’s side. In his Second Inaugural Address Lincoln pointed out that both sides asked God’s help and, “The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.”
Why?
“The Almighty has His own purposes.”
Lincoln did not hesitate in judging the institution of slavery: it was immoral. He knew that rebellion and disunion, corrupted by a peculiar connection to slavery, was intolerable, but he also knew that the Union was not guiltless. The Constitution had tolerated slavery and the Union had profited from the unpaid work of slaves forced from them by the lash of the masters.
The factories that churned out the Northern arms were not models of equality or justice.
Saying that God Almighty was not “on the side” of the Union is just American Civics 101. Lincoln taught Americans that we must invoke God’s aid, but do so with humility. We can fight for justice, but with charity toward all. Our cause may be righteous, but we are not.
Lincoln accepted that the City of God and the City of Man never fully overlap. Subjects of King Jesus are always in tension with the demands of being a citizen of the Republic. This is not God’s nation (though it is His country), but this side of Paradise I am a member of the American commonwealth. When the judgment comes and all tribes and nations stand before the Almighty, I will stand with shame and pride before His throne as an American.
Practically speaking, this will matter in my vote for President of the United States. I am confident of the righteousness of the pro-life cause and of the morality of traditional marriage. My cause is just, but those are not the only issues that will be decided in the next great election.
And no party, certainly not the Republican Party, is righteous, because I am in it and I am not righteous. I stand before God imperfect and His judgments, with eternity in mind, are inscrutable. Many a slave owner was just in some area of his life not related to slavery; many a pro-choicer may be more loving than I in many ways not related to abortion.
Otherwise just men end up in unjust causes.
So I must press on with humility to do right as God gives me to see the right. For most of us, the realization that there are righteous causes, such as conservation, but no simple “bad guys” to oppose leads to impotence. Lincoln had no malice and great charity, but ran the largest armed force on the planet to do justice.
He was willing to act with determination, but not with ego. As a result, Lincoln was no tyrant and the bad he did, such as suspending some civil liberties, died with him, but his righteous causes, Union and liberty, lived to inspire other great men and women.
Let’s vote and disagree with this in mind. Our foes are wrong, but they are not Satan’s minions. We are not angels of God, but merely people sullying the flag by our raising it. “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in . . . “
November 13th, 2011 | 2:08 pm | #1
a hard line to walk between nationalism and the kingdom.
Habakkuk 3:17-19
17 Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
(OR BARAK OBAMA IS RE-ELECTED)
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 eye I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
19 God, the Lord, is my strength;
ghe makes my feet like the deer’s;
he makes me htread on my high places.
God is good and I will rejoice in HIS sovereign plan!
November 13th, 2011 | 2:31 pm | #2
Please don’t use Lincoln as a moral example; he was responsible for the deaths of more than 600,000 people and he waged total war on women and children of the South. The monstrous federal government we now have originated with Lincoln. Most Lincoln Republicans are now Obama Democrats. Southerners who were victimized by Lincoln and his war criminals are now Republicans fighting for the values you profess to have. Please don’t rewrite history.
November 14th, 2011 | 3:53 am | #3
I think that, overall, Lincoln was a good president, and I do agree highly with his abolitionist stance. I do think that he did a lot of morally reprehensible things, like suspending habeas corpus when Northern troops were moving towards the capital, but I agree with a lot of what we had to say.
And Sam, I’m not sure what “Southerners” you’re talking about, but if you’re talking about the Confederate Southerners, I’d say I’d have plenty of problems. Not the least of which is the fact that the people who still tout the Confederate cause today often (a) carry slightly racist attitudes or (b) try to whitewash slavery out of their history as a non-issue, which is fundamentally not true. I don’t know if that’s the Southerners you’re talking about, but if it is I think that moral priorities are more askew in the population that thinks that we ought to move back to a pre-Civil Rights mentality.
November 14th, 2011 | 4:45 am | #4
In the 2nd inaugural, Lincoln didn’t claim Divine endorsement, but he did consider the war as a measure of Divine justice for our country’s reprehensible endorsement of human bondage.
“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”"
November 14th, 2011 | 9:57 am | #5
Nikolai, there simply can be no excuse for the horrendous loss of life life Mr. Lincoln’s War was responsible for. His Radical Republican Party also effectively destroyed our Constitutional Republic. No wonder Obama says Lincoln is his favorite president. He will finish what Lincoln Republicanism started. Obama’s America will not be a friendly place for Christians, in case you haven’t noticed.
November 14th, 2011 | 1:50 pm | #6
“Obama’s America will not be a friendly place for Christians, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Why?
November 15th, 2011 | 11:17 am | #7
“there simply can be no excuse for the horrendous loss of life life Mr. Lincoln’s War was responsible for”
The presupposition I’m drawing from your claim is that war is never justified? If so, that would be rather ironic because when you stated:
“His Radical Republican Party also effectively destroyed our Constitutional Republic”
Just a little history lesson, our constitutional republic was established through immense bloodshed.
So if you really hold our constitutional republic in such high regard than at least be consistent. If starting a war in order to make sure that rights are spread to every person is an illegitimate loss of life, than surely a war to establish a government to facilitate similar rights is also illegitimate. The fashion in which our constitutional republic was established was unjustified.
November 15th, 2011 | 12:31 pm | #8
“Let’s vote and disagree with this in mind. Our foes are wrong, but they are not Satan’s minions.”
I wonder how that response would have gone over if Saul were to say that to Samuel for not slaying all the Amalekites as God had commanded him to do.
November 16th, 2011 | 7:24 pm | #9
Truth Unites ..
The general approach to genocide (even among fundamentalists who support its use in Scripture) is that it is proper only when in response to a direct command from God or one of His prophets.
At this time, however, the canon of Scripture is closed. God no longer speaks audibly to people, and there are no living prophets or patriarchs.
Otherwise, why not just lay waste to the pretty much every nation in the world with our weapons of mass destruction that we now have?
Your reference is not relevant.
November 17th, 2011 | 1:15 pm | #10
You miss the point. Try again.
November 17th, 2011 | 1:58 pm | #11
James,
It seems that TUAD’s point is that for one to use that logic in the story of Saul and Samuel would have been to undermine God’s divine command, not that genocide is still justifiable nowadays.
That said, I’m not sure the relevance of TUAD’s claim there. Yes, it would have changed that story, but I don’t see why that has anything to do with JMR’s claim about genocide now. Moreover, someone can be wrong (as the Amalekites were) and not be “Satan’s minions.” Demon possession isn’t an inherent prerequisite for sin.
November 19th, 2011 | 7:56 pm | #12
The slave-holding tried to leave the Union so they could avoid having to obey laws that would limit the spread of slavery and eventually its abolition. They fired the first shots of the war, shelling Fort Sumter in order to demonstrate they felt no loyalty to the United States and considered its army to be a de jure invasion on their territory. If they had suceeded in secession, both the Union and Confederacy would have fallen apart, with states splitting off from both, and the central governments utterly unable to govern out of fear of more defections. There would have been four or six nations instead of one. Alaska would still be Russian. Some midwestern states like Wisconsin and Minnesota might have joined Canada. There would have bern continuing tyranny over a million slaves, with violence, rape and deprivation.
And come the 20th Century, thete would have been no conitent-spanning United States with the intetests in both Atlantic and Pacific that would combat both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. There would have been no United States capable of grinding down the Soviet Union into the dustbin of history. Tyranny allowed to stand in America would have protected international tyranny. A hundred nations today, including all those former coloanies of liberated Europe, would be sla
November 19th, 2011 | 8:00 pm | #13
(Continued) slave states. Freedom around the world today would not have been posdible if Lincoln had failed to keep America both united and free. If that could not be foreseen in the 1860s, we should be all the more grateful now that Lincoln and the Union sacrificed so much to bring our world into being.
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