Mankind's Greatest Hour

 

Today, as we fire up our grills and crack open our beers, let us remember why we even have a July 4th holiday: To commemorate the greatest act of shared, selfless courage the world has ever seen.

Everybody should know that Thomas Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence. Most people know the names of a handful of the 56 men who signed it, such as John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, and of course Jefferson himself. But few people seem to realize that when those men signed their names, they were committing what was considered an act of treason against the British crown, punishable by death. Those men were property owners who were successful in their lives and businesses. Their lives were comfortable and they stood to lose everything by signing the Declaration -- yet they chose to sign it anyway, because they knew that casting off the crown and forming a new government based on individual liberty was the right thing to do, not only for their own descendants but for all of humanity. And here is what happened to some of those men after they signed the Declaration:

Five of them became prisoners of war.

Nearly one-sixth of them died before the war ended.

British forces burned, and/or looted, the homes and properties of nearly one-third of them.

When the British did that to the property of William Floyd, he and his family fled and spent the next seven years living as refugees without income. His wife died two years before the war ended.

After being forced into the wilderness by British forces, John Hart struggled to make his way home. When he finally got there, he found that his wife was dead and his 13 children were missing. He died without ever seeing them again.

Richard Stockton was dragged from his bed and sent to prison while his property was ravaged. From the day of his release from prison until the day he died, he had to rely on charity from others to feed his family.

Francis Lewis’s wife was imprisoned and beaten. Meanwhile, his wealth was plundered. His last years were spent as a widower living in poverty.

Thomas Nelson Jr.’s home was captured and occupied by British General Cornwallis, who used it as what we would now call an operations center. Therefore, Nelson ordered his troops to destroy his own home with cannon fire during the Battle of Yorktown. To assist in funding the war, he used his own credit to borrow 2 million dollars, which today would equal more than 25 billion dollars. Repaying that debt bankrupted him, and when he died he was buried in an unmarked grave.

It is a safe bet that fewer than one percent of our citizens have ever heard of these people, much less know anything about the devastating sacrifices they made so that future generations could have the freedom necessary to build the kind of upwardly-mobile, always-progressing society we would come to take for granted.

The Founding Fathers bequeathed to us a wonderful gift called America, and we owe it to our children to make sure we don’t allow that gift to be destroyed. We should never hear the words “Fourth of July” without feeling a skip in our heart and a tear in our eye.

Much thanks to Jeff Jacoby, the late Paul Harvey, and all the others who have written and spoken about the fates of the signers, to keep their story alive. 

Memorial Day

 

Today is Memorial Day -- a day set aside not so we can grill burgers and toss back beers while the kids swim in the pool. It is set aside for the solemn purpose of honoring our servicemen who died while defending America's citizens from the myriad enemies who have sought to drive freedom from our shores.

From the first person who perished on Lexington’s village green in 1775, up to the most recent fatality in the Middle East, the list of the fallen is long. Each person on that list made a sacrifice that was ultimate in its earthly finality. We should resolve to do everything in our power to defend America's founding principles against all foes -- domestic in addition to foreign, orators in addition to terrorists -- to ensure that those people did not die in vain.

To observe past Memorial Days, I have published a couple letters that were written by soldiers during wartime. Here they are again.

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This first one was from Sullivan Ballou, a major in the U.S. Army during the Civil War, to his wife. He was killed in the Battle of First Bull Run one week after writing it:

July 14, 1861

Camp Clark, Washington

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days – perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing – perfectly willing – to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield. The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And it is hard for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us.

I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me – perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly I would wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness.

But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be near you, in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights…always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

Sullivan Ballou

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This next letter was written by Arnold Rahe, a sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, with instructions that it be delivered to his parents if he did not survive. He was killed in action shortly thereafter:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Strange thing about this letter; if I am alive a month from now you will not receive it, for its coming to you will mean that after my twenty-sixth birthday God has decided I’ve been on earth long enough and He wants me to come up and take the examination for permanent service with Him. It’s hard to write a letter like this; there are a million and one things I want to say; there are so many I ought to say if this is the last letter I ever write to you. I’m telling you that I love you two so very much; not one better than the other but absolutely equally. Some things a man can never thank his parents enough for; they come to be taken for granted through the years; care when you are a child, and countless favors as he grows up. I am recalling now all your prayers, your watchfulness -- all the sacrifices that were made for me when sacrifice was a real thing and not just a word to be used in speeches.

For any and all grief I caused you in this 26 years, I’m most heartily sorry. I know that I can never make up for those little hurts and real wounds, but maybe if God permits me to be with Him above, I can help out there. It’s a funny thing about this mission, but I don’t think I’ll come back alive. Call it an Irishman’s hunch or a pre-sentiment or whatever you will. I believe it is Our Lord and His Blessed Mother giving me a tip to be prepared. In the event that I am killed you can have the consolation of knowing that it was in the “line of duty” to my country. I am saddened because I shall not be with you in your life’s later years, but until we meet I want you to know that I die as I tried to live, the way you taught me. Life has turned out different from the way we planned it, and at 26 I die with many things to live for, but the loss of the few remaining years unlived together is as nothing compared to the eternity to which we go.

As I prepare for this last mission, I am a bit homesick. I have been at other times when I thought of you, when I lost a friend, when I wondered when and how this war would end. But, the whole world is homesick! I have never written like this before, even though I have been through the “valley of the shadows” many times, but this night, Mother and Dad, you are so very close to me and I long so to talk to you. I think of you and of home. America has asked much of our generation, but I am glad to give her all I have because she has given me so much.

Goodnight, dear Mother and Dad. God love you.

Your loving son,

(Bud) Arnold Rahe

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God bless them all, and may they never be forgotten.

The Reality

This post was first published in 2015.

"Word deflation" has become almost epidemic in our society. For example, above-average sports performances are so often called "great" that the word has lost its meaning.

In sports, the word "great" was once worthy of being capitalized. It is supposed to refer to things so extraordinary that they are exceedingly rare, like Jesse Owens winning four gold medals in front of Hitler or Don Larsen pitching a perfect game in the World Series. Instead, it now gets used to refer to an NBA power forward scoring 31 points against a losing team in a regular season game. You can't blame a Millennial Generation sports fan for not finding it strange that Patrick Kane gets described with the same adjective that is synonymous with Wayne Gretzky.

Obviously, there are far more serious examples of word deflation. Those who argue for any military action, regardless of how limited or for what reason, are accused of "warmongering." Those who argue for major tax increases are called "Marxists" even if they've never said the government should control the country's means of production (admittedly, I myself have probably deflated the definition of "Marxist" a few times).

Perhaps the most pernicious example, however, is the cavalier use of the word "lynching." When people go public with their passionate opinions and others respond by passionately disagreeing, they often liken the response to "a public lynching." I know someone who said she experienced something "like a public lynching" when a whopping eleven individuals on a private Facebook timeline agreed with a blog post that did not even identify her but did disagree with one of her positions -- never mind that her name was not brought up on the timeline until the ninth of the eleven chimed in, and never mind that two of the eleven had then posted comments saying they would never criticize her by name in a public forum (full disclosure: The "lynch"-inducing blog post was written by me).

In any event, lynching has an actual definition. It means something specific in the English language, and even more specific in this country. Using it as an analogy for common and unremarkable human behavior (have you ever shared an opinion with five of your closest friends and had all of them agree with you?) is worse than bad form, and these days it happens so much we barely notice it. The problem is, this overuse numbs us to the reality of what lynching actually was and what it still could be. I suspect that when an actual historical lynching gets mentioned, most Americans barely pay attention because they've heard the word so much they've become inoculated against its horror.

I subscribe to the Faulkner school of thought which holds that "the past is never dead," and the Santayana school of thought which holds that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Knowledge of history is necessary for us to appreciate our blessings; to understand how easy it would have been for us to not receive them in the first place; and to realize that there is no guarantee we will continue to have them if we don't bother to defend them.

With that in mind, there is no better time than today -- the 116th anniversary of a particular man's death -- to think about what it really means to be lynched.

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Newnan, Georgia is roughly 30 minutes from Atlanta and 90 minutes from my college town of Auburn, Alabama. As the seat of Coweta County, it features a handsome downtown and attractive courthouse. It is the birthplace of gold-hearted country singer Alan Jackson and the current home of a friend of mine from college. The people who live in Newnan are salt-of-the-earth types who treat individuals with respect, and they are that kind of people because their parents taught them to be.

But on April 23, 1899, something inhumane happened at Troutman Field just north of town, between Newnan and the smaller burg of Palmetto; and even though the incident garnered national attention at the time, it has been so forgotten in the interim that many of Coweta County's residents, even those from long-established families, have never heard of it.

In the 1870's a black baby was born in Macon County and given the name Tom Wilkes. At some point in his late teens or early twenties, he adopted the same Sam Hose and moved to Coweta County, where he was employed as a farmhand by Alfred and Mattie Cranford.

On April 12, 1899, Alfred Cranford was murdered in his home when somebody split his head with an axe. Authorities quickly suspected Hose, and in addition to accusing him of murdering Alfred, they also accused him of raping Mattie. The fact that he was fairly new to the area and lacked a local network of friends to vouch for him may have contributed to him being so quickly fingered.

Reports from the time described Mattie as being either "deranged" or "crazed" or "unbalanced" or "unconscious for two days" after the incident. Regardless of whether any of those words were accurate, it does not appear that she ever identified Hose as being either her husband's killer or her own rapist. Nonetheless, a number of prominent people and entities -- namely, the Atlanta Constitution, Governor Allen Candler, the Coweta County government, the town of Pametto, and Capital City National Bank President Jacob Haas -- together offered $1,600 in reward money, which would equal about $46,000 today.

At some point close to when the incident occurred, Hose left Coweta County to visit his mother, who was ill, in Macon County. Some contemporaneous reports indicated that on the day Cranford was killed, Hose requested time off to visit his mother and Cranford denied the request, leading to an argument in which Cranford brandished a gun and Hose used his axe (which he was holding because he had come inside from working) to defend himself. Other reports claim that Hose had already left by the time Cranford was killed, and others of course claim that Hose killed him in cold blood. The bottom line is that nobody knows which is true.

Several days later, J.B. and J.L. Jones, who owned the farm on which Hose's mother worked, were informed by another worker that Hose was on the property at his mother's cabin. Aware of the reward money and seeing dollar signs in their eyes, they conspired with the other worker to lure Hose into a nighttime trap, and thus they captured and bound him on April 22nd.

Because they had to personally deliver him to the authorities in Atlanta to receive the reward -- and knew that vigilantes were out to get him, and that newspaper pictures had made his face known to the general public -- the Jones brothers felt the need to disguise him en route to Atlanta. Therefore they covered him with a raincoat to hide his shackles and powdered his skin to make him appear a shade darker. However, their plan didn't work because when the train stopped at Griffin, the last stop before Atlanta, a passenger eyed the trio and alerted railroad workers. Reportedly, someone yelled: "The Palmetto killer! The nigger's here in the cars!"

Within moments, vengeance-minded people swept through the train and carried Hose off at gunpoint. A separate train, consisting of only one coach car in addition to the locomotive and coal car, was quickly assembled to transport him to Newnan. Roughly 150 "escorts," most if not all of whom were armed, crammed into it to make sure he did not escape en route. When the train arrived, mob justice was waiting.

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Sam Hose received no trial. Humans denied him the very rights that the Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution assert were given to him by God. Those hallowed documents assert that humans may not deprive their fellow humans of God-given rights, but on April 23, 1899, humans did precisely that to Sam Hose.

When we think of lynching, we tend to think... actually, we tend not to think. Instead, we abstractly realize that people died but shrug their deaths off as happening long ago and far away, even though they weren't long ago and definitely weren't far way. We tend to minimize the fact that the deceased were human beings just like ourselves. We don't ponder the sad prospect that at some point in the future, people might consider our lives and experiences to be distant and irrelevant to theirs -- the same way that too many of us consider the lives and experiences of human beings in the 1890's to be distant and irrelevant to our own. Too many of us fail to comprehend that history is a loop in which we are all players, that the actions of people in one generation create circumstances that affect the next; and that for precisely that reason, we must never forget what happened before we took life's stage.

When we hear the word "lynching," we tend to think that a person died many years ago but the world has progressed. We tend to think that they were hanged, and in so doing we tend to think that they suffered several seconds of breath-gasping but quickly blacked out and never woke up. We can unwittingly trick our minds into thinking their deaths were fast and not too painful, and the next thing you know, we never get around to contemplating the horror they must have experienced.

But here is what really happened to people back when lynching was stunningly commonplace in this ethically conceived nation, and you need not take my word for it -- instead, take the words of articles that were written at the time, like this one from the Springfield Republican of Springfield, Massachusetts, reporting on Sam Hose's death:

Before the torch was applied to the pyre, the negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body... Before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones were crushed into small bits... (His) heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver... Small pieces of bones went for 25 cents, and a bit of liver crisply cooked sold for 10 cents.

Notice the nonchalant nature of the words, how the murder of a human being is described as antiseptically as the dissection of a fish in a high school science class... Notice the use of the word "negro" instead of "man"... And keep in mind that Hose being "deprived of" his ears, fingers and genitals (i.e., having them cut off with knives) occurred while he was still alive and very much awake.

According to this thoroughly researched book by Phillip Dray, Hose kept his fear hidden until he saw sunlight reflect off the blade of someone's knife, after which he pleaded that the mob kill him quickly. Of course, his plea was denied because "the mob's act of retribution would be considered something of a failure if Hose did not die a prolonged, painful death."

He was stripped of his clothes and tied to a pine trunk atop a pyre, which had been built of lumber, limbs, fence posts, and railroad ties. Dray provides the following account of the lynching:

The torture of the victim lasted almost half an hour. It began when a man stepped forward and very matter-of-factly sliced off Hose's ears. Then several men grabbed Hose's arms and held them forward so his fingers could be severed one by one and shown to the crowd. Finally, a blade was passed between his thighs. Hose cried in agony, and a moment later his genitals were held aloft.

From the crude incisions he'd suffered, the bound, naked man was soon covered with bright crimson blood from head to foot, and must have appeared at last to be the "black devil" the newspapers had made him out to be all along. It was the last clear glimpse the crowd had of him, for with the command "Come on with the oil!" three men lifted the large can of kerosene and dumped its contents over Sam Hose's head, and the pyre was set ablaze.

"Sweet Jesus!" Hose was heard to exclaim, and these were believed to be his last words. As the flames began licking at his legs and smoke entered his nose, eyes, and mouth he turned his head desperately from side to side. To the crowd's astonishment he somehow managed to reach back and, pushing with all his might against the tree to which he was chained, snapped the bonds around his chest, bursting a blood vessel in his neck with the strain of his exertions. For a moment it appeared this writhing, half-dead apparition might break free and stagger into the crowd, but the whites rushed forward and, using several large, heavy pieces of wood, pushed him back into the fire and pinned him down. One of these logs was near his head, and with a last desperate effort Hose grimaced and sank his teeth into it, then died.

Word of Hose's capture reached Atlanta before the lynching was carried out. So, too, did word that the lynching was planned, and trains were hastily chartered to transport people to Newnan so they could watch it like spectators at a sporting event. Therefore, when the sun climbed into the sky on April 24th, W.E.B. Du Bois was very much aware of what had happened outside of Newnan the day before.

31 years old at the time and already a renowned author, Du Bois had been living in Atlanta for two years. Troubled by what he had already learned while researching lynching, and by the fact that Sam Hose had just been lynched not far from where he lived, Du Bois decided to do something about it. He donned his best clothes, grabbed his walking cane, left his home, and began walking through downtown. He carried with him a letter of introduction to Joe Harris, an editorial writer for the Atlanta Constitution who openly supported black rights and condemned lynching.

Du Bois's intention, as he later told it, was to speak with Harris and "try to put before the South what happened in cases of this sort, and try to see if I couldn't start some sort of movement." As he made his way down Mitchell Street, however, he heard that Sam Hose's knuckles had been brought to Atlanta and were on sale at a grocery store mere blocks away. This news delivered a shock that Du Bois said "pulled me off my feet," and likely drove him to fear. It prodded him to turn around and head back home, and his hoped-for meeting with Harris never happened.

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That, my friends, is what it means to be lynched. And the victims of every lynching include more than the person who was actually lynched.

Consider the case of Sam Hose. He was of course the primary victim, but when you read about the horrors of his final hour, it becomes easy to forget that Alfred Cranford also died a horrific death when the blade of an axe was smashed into his skull eleven days earlier.

Then there was Mattie Cranford, who, at best, witnessed the killing of her husband; or, at worst, witnessed his killing and was then immediately and violently raped while his corpse laid nearby. Mattie was only 24 at the time and died just 23 years later, after moving inside of Newnan's town limits and living a sullen life, sewing to support her family and rarely leaving the house

Which brings us to the matter of her and Alfred's children. Obviously, they were left fatherless by the events of 1899, but what I did not mention above is that they were also injured during the attack that left their father dead. The youngest son, Clifford, was blinded in his left eye.

All black residents in the area were victims, in that they must have lived the remainder of their lives on a razor's edge of fear, knowing what fate could befall them if somebody decided to accuse them of a crime.

Hose's mother was a victim, left ill and frail and without her son.

The consciences of white people in the area -- those who were sickened by the wickedness of the lynching yet had to keep living amid those who did it -- were also victims

Honor was a victim because the Newnan residents who tried to stop the lynching -- one of whom was a former governor, William Yates Atkinson -- never got the recognition they deserved.

Truth was a victim because there is no way to know if Hose was innocent or guilty of killing Alfred and raping Mattie.

Justice was a victim because Hose was killed without proof of wrongdoing, without even being allowed to defend himself... and justice was also a victim because if Hose was in fact innocent, then it means the killer walked free and remained able to harm others.

W.E.B. Du Bois's faith in humanity and the United States were victims, for he lost them both and understandably so. Although he went on to have a long and decent life, often advocating for civil rights and not dying until the age of 95, it is a stain on our history that one of our most brilliant minds wound up feeling compelled to flee into the arms of Communist sympathizing; and I can't help but wonder if the lynching of San Hose was a major reason that happened.

And, though it is easy not to think about them, the souls of some of the people who participated in the lynching were victims, as were the souls of some of the people who watched and enjoyed it. It has been said that several perpetrators struggled with emotional problems for the remainder of their days. In 2006, a Coweta County retiree said that an older relative once confessed to having participated in the lynching and to spending the rest of his life struggling to come to terms with his actions that night. The anguish of the guilty in this case was as nothing compared to the anguish of the innocent -- and I suspect it was no different than the anguish of Marley's ghost, who declared "I wear the chain I forged in life" -- yet I do believe that for some of them, it was just as sincere as it was deserved.

But here is the ultimate kicker: The lynching of Sam Hose was not even remotely unique. According to the Charles Chesnutt Digital Archive, there were 4,743 documented lynchings in this country between 1882 and 1968, with the victims being black in almost three-fourths of them. This equates to 55 per year, which is an average of more than one per week. That average was certainly higher during the early decades of the period in question, and would probably be higher still if statistics were known for the years between 1865 (when the Civil War ended) and 1882.

Lynching was a real phenomenon and was not confined to the distant past. We should never forget that. And when somebody claims that they feel like they were lynched because they were the subject of criticism or jokes, we should tell them we understand that the experience had to hurt -- and then we should gently explain to them what it really means to be lynched.

Addendum:  There is an interesting side note regarding Joe Harris, the editorial writer that W.E.B. Du Bois intended to meet with. Although he went by Joe Harris as a journalist, people today are more likely to know him by his full given name, Joel Chandler Harris, under which he wrote the Uncle Remus stories when he was younger.

247 years ago

The hours from tonight through tomorrow morning mark the 247th anniversary of Paul Revere's "midnight ride" and the battles that ensued. It is one of the most significant anniversaries in American history -- perhaps the most significant, because it can be argued that if not for the events that took place on April 18th and 19th, 1775, the United States might never have come to be.

Tensions between colonists and the royal rulers from the other side of the Atlantic were running high in those days. Though this was true in all of the colonies that would become our first 13 states, it was especially true in Massachusetts, where the monarchy had effectively shut Boston off from the world by blockading its port and quartering large numbers of soldiers within the city.

It was believed that government forces (officially called "Regulars" and derisively called "redcoats") would invade the colony en masse, so residents in surrounding towns had been stockpiling munitions to defend themselves. The redcoats targeted Lexington and Concord, the former because revolutionaries John Hancock and Samuel Adams were thought to be there, and the latter because it hosted the Provincial Congress and was rumored to have a huge stash of munitions the government wanted to confiscate.

When redcoat forces were detected sneaking from Boston under cover of darkness on April 18th, Paul Revere and William Dawes mounted their horses and galloped into the countryside to warn their fellow citizens. Revere departed from Charlestown, across the Charles River from Boston proper, while Dawes left directly from the city. Revere’s route was the shortest to Lexington and Concord, and thus he was the first to warn their occupants of what was coming.

The next morning, Lexington’s village green was the site of the first skirmish between government forces and the citizen militia known as minutemen. The latter took the worst of it, with eight dead and ten wounded compared to just a single wounded redcoat.

The redcoats then marched on to their primary goal of Concord. After arriving and crossing the North Bridge, nearly half of them went about securing the bridge while the rest searched for weapons. When wooden cannon mounts were found, they were set afire and before long the flames engulfed a church.

Positioned on Punkatasset Hill some 300 yards from the bridge, Concord’s minutemen had been joined by minutemen from neighboring towns, giving them a numerical advantage the redcoats did not anticipate. When they saw the rising smoke, they believed their homes were being destroyed and responded by advancing.

Seeing them approach in such numbers, the redcoats retreated back across the bridge. A shot soon rang out, though no one knows who fired it, and within minutes a full-blown battle had transpired in which half of the officers from the government troops were wounded. Disoriented, they fled back toward Boston and along the way fell under fire from minutemen who had arrived from elsewhere and were hiding behind fences and walls. By the time they made it back to the city, they had sustained more than 200 casualties.

It was an indisputable defeat for the world’s most powerful military, delivered by ordinary people seeking simply to defend themselves against oppression. The example set by those people ignited the fuse of the American Revolution in such a way that it would not be extinguished.

But as with all mass "remembrances" of things that happened long ago, some of the things people assume to be true are not. In the case of Paul Revere's ride, the inaccuracies cut both ways and are of differing levels of importance.

Generations upon generations of American schoolchildren have been told that Revere warned farmers and villagers that "the British are coming!" Those schoolchildren have grown up and passed along that telling to their own kids. In reality, however, what Revere said that night was "the Regulars are coming out." That quote is from his own subsequent account, and from accounts of those he warned. It would never have occurred to him to say "the British are coming!" because he himself was British and so was everyone else in the 13 colonies.

For Revere to have warned people that "the British are coming" would be like me telling my neighbors that state troopers are entering the neighborhood by saying "the Floridians are coming." It would not have made sense. But by keeping the "British are coming" narrative alive for so long, and casually saying that the subsequent Revolutionary War was against "the British," we citizens of the United States have unwittingly distorted something important about our nation's genesis. Specifically, we have abetted a myth which holds that the idea of individual human beings having rights upon which government may not infringe was born on these shores, in the brains of our Founding Fathers. In reality, that idea -- which I fervently believe and which I do indeed "hold to be self-evident" -- was born not in American colonies of the 1700's but in southern England of the 1200's.

A full 558 years before the Boston Tea Party, 560 before Paul Revere's ride, and 561 before the Declaration of Independence, the outline of individual rights that would later serve as the basis for the United States was laid out in the Magna Carta, in the year 1215. Because human nature is human nature and political power abhors a vacuum, the British government infringed on those rights as the centuries passed, but the Magna Carta did not disappear from the British public conscience. In the 1500's an upsurge of interest in that document was kindled; and in the 1600's, Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke argued in favor of the freedom that was enshrined in it.

When our Founding Fathers pushed back against the monarchy of the 1700's, they did not do so with the belief that they were sailing uncharted philosophical waters. They did so because they believed, accurately, that their rights as British citizens had been violated by a British government that was acting counter to British ideals. They considered themselves the true Britons and the rulers from London the false Britons. The notion of a separate American identity decoupled from any British identity probably never entered their minds, yet a separate identity is what came to be. Most Americans living today wrongly believe that a separate identity was part of the plan.

I am not sure exactly how to build the bridge between the inaccuracy I just noted and the one I am about to note, so I won't even attempt to build it. However, the inaccuracy is worth noting and there may be no better time to do it than when talking about Paul Revere's ride, so here I go -- and it is related to, of all things, race.

I am a history buff who grew up in a house where history was frequently discussed, and I always did good in school, always taking advanced classes, so it says something bad about American schools that I never heard of Crispus Attucks or Peter Salem until I was grown. Rather than learn their names when I studied AP American History, I learned them by reading the text of a speech that was given by Duke Ellington in 1941, in which he passionately made the case that black Americans are historically loyal to and historically integral to the United States.

Opining that "although numerically but ten percent of the mammoth chorus that today, with an eye overseas, sings 'America' with fervor and thanksgiving, I say our ten percent is the very heart of the chorus," Ellington mentioned that "America is reminded of the feats of Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, black armies in the Revolution..." Realizing that those names had been mentioned with the assumption that listeners knew them (in the era of Jim Crow, no less) got me to researching, and I learned things that most Americans would have a hard time believing.

Crispus Attucks was born a slave, circa 1723 in the vicinity of Framingham, Massachusetts, which tells you that slavery was not just a Southern thing. Attucks was the son of a black man and Natick Indian woman, and at some point in his adult life became either a free man or a runaway slave who was not seriously pursued. What is known for sure is that he became a productive rope-maker, seaman, and goods-trader who was known and respected on the Boston docks.

On March 2, 1770, five years before Paul Revere's ride, a fight erupted between redcoats and Boston rope-makers. Three nights later, the dispute escalated when five Bostonians were killed by redcoats in an event that came to be known as the Boston Massacre. Many historians consider the massacre to be the first violent act that started history's train chugging toward the Revolutionary War, and because Attucks was the first colonist to die in the massacre, he -- a biracial man born a slave, hailing from the only two races that have experienced systemic legal racism in America -- is considered by many to be the first fatality of the American Revolution. Today you can visit his final resting place in Beantown's third-oldest cemetery.

Meanwhile, Peter Salem was also born a slave in the vicinity of Framingham. His original slave master, Jeremiah Belknap, at some point sold him to Lawson Buckminster. In 1775, when Salem was believed to be 25 years old, Buckminster granted him freedom and he enlisted in the Continental Army to combat the redcoats.

Salem was literally involved in Paul Revere's ride because he fought as a minuteman during the skirmish in Concord. One week later he enlisted with the 5th Massachusetts Regiment and went on to fight at the famous Battles of Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Stony Point.

One of the colonists' main achievements at Bunker Hill was the killing of British Major John Pitcairn as the battle unfolded. It is known that Salem was one of the soldiers who shot Pitcairn, and generally believed that his shot was the first to strike him. Salem's role was publicly acknowledged as far back as 1786, when a famous painting by John Trumbull depicted him holding a musket as Pitcairn fell. In 1968, that portion of the painting (excluding the image of Pitcairn on the ground) was reproduced as this U.S. postage stamp.

After the war Salem built a cabin near Leicester, Massachusetts, where he lived most of his remaining days subsisting as a gardener and cane-weaver. He was reportedly well-liked by the townspeople and enjoyed regaling children by telling them stories of the war. Upon his death in 1816, he was laid to rest at the Old Burying Ground in his birth town of Framingham. In 1882 Framingham established an annual Peter Salem Day, and the town still observes his birthday each October 1st.

None of which is to deny that slavery was America's Original Sin, or that racial inequality in non-slave areas was American's Original Sin Part 1(b). These historical facts do, however, show that the racial jumble which existed at America's founding was not as cut-and-dry as most people assume. They show that the Revolution was supported by more people than just the rich and "lily white." These things need to be understood and taught in order for future generations to have a true, balanced understanding (and appreciation) of how America got to where it is.

The train of history does not follow an inevitable track. It changes direction over and over again based on the actions and inactions of men and women. If a bunch of ticked-off English property owners had not precipitated the drafting of the Magna Carta in 1215... if later encroachments by the British monarchy had not incited people to hold the Magna Carta dear to their hearts... if the likes of John Locke had not later written clearly about the ideals of liberty that were at its heart... if, later still, Adam Smith had not written about how those ideals apply to economics and lead to mutually beneficial free trade... if the Founding Fathers had not read the likes of Locke and Smith, and not sought to re-assert individual rights against the monarchy's despotic aims... if Crispus Attucks, by being murdered along with four other Bostonians in 1770, had not helped make commoners feel antipathy to the crown... if Paul Revere had not chosen to warn colonists with his midnight ride, so that the colonists could prevent the British Regulars from stealing their arms... if Peter Salem had not been at Bunker Hill to shoot Major Pitcairn and deprive the British military of one of its most creative leaders... if America's early abolitionists were not able to point to heroic actions by the likes of Peter Salem, in order to give some of their uncertain countrymen pause and thereby keep their movement alive... well, who knows what would have happened? Those are a lot of ifs, and every one of them was an important link in a very long chain that eventually led to freedom expanding its reach and slavery being abolished in North America.

Today is a day for reflection on our shared past, and a time for figuring out how we can learn from that past to decide what course we should take in today's extremely dangerous world. We must take pains to ensure that our national memory first gets strengthened, and that it then gets preserved, if we have any hope of being confident and self-assured as we face the future.

Good Friday

This post was first published in 2021.

My most recent post highlighted logical reasons for believing that the resurrection of Jesus actually occurred, and why Christians should not be sheepish about saying so.

Yesterday was Holy Thursday (sometimes called Maundy Thursday) which commemorates the Last Supper, and today is Good Friday which commemorates Jesus's trial, scourging, and crucifixion.

The specific year in which those events took place is up for debate, seeing as how the BC/AD delineation (or BCE/CE, if you prefer) was not yet devised, but it's almost certain that it was sometime between 30 and 38 AD. Regardless of the year, the overlapping nighttime hours between the events are when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and Judas betrayed him in exchange for thirty pieces of silver.

There have been several times I've been in conversation about the importance of prayer and have pointed to a scene from the Gospel of Luke in which, the day before Jesus chose his twelve disciples, he "went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God." I've basically said "he's Jesus, if even he needs to pray, and pray all night, then surely we need to pray too." But as important as that example of praying is, I don't know why I usually cite it instead of the example in Gethsemane -- for the latter is probably the most poignant moment in the entire Bible.

Because we get so hung up on the idea of Jesus being divine, we tend to forget that he was also fully human while he was here on Earth. He was trapped, as it were, in a human body with all of its limitations and frailties, and therefore with much of the trepidation that can result from those limitations and frailties.

Jesus felt pain just like us, and needed rest just like us. His bones could be broken, his skin torn, his arteries ruptured, etc.

It is significant that he did not sin, but the reason that's significant is that he pulled it off while still subject to the lures of temptation.

Because Jesus was born a baby and had to grow up, he was not born with a brain that already knew his divine nature. That was something he would need to learn as he grew, and it is not clear if he had learned it before he was 12 and Mary and Joseph found him in the temple.

He felt joy and sadness -- John 11:35 famously records that upon the death of Lazarus, "Jesus wept" -- and, yes, he even felt fear, which fueled his prayer in Gethsemane. Knowing the unthinkably terrifying pain that awaited him the following day, Jesus described himself as "overwhelmed" and asked his disciples to "stay here and keep watch with me." Then he walked "a little farther" and "fell with his face to the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.'"

Thus he asked to be spared from crucifixion, despite knowing full well that crucifixion was the whole reason he was sent here and born of Mary. In fact he asked three times that night to be spared, yet concluded his praying with resignation by saying: "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done."

It is a moment unlike any other in history. In our modern age, it is best captured by this scene from The Passion of the Christ. It's too easy for us to forget about the fact of Jesus's humanity, and sometimes it's difficult to force ourselves to think about just what his humanity meant; but when you watch that movie, especially the scene I just linked to and this scene of him being whipped, there is no way to avoid thinking about his humanity and suffering.

On this Good Friday (and frankly, on every other day as well) we should remember Jesus's torment and the reason he willingly endured it. We should appreciate that gift and indulge in it.

And as I was getting at earlier, we should remember that prayer is also a divine gift, one that Jesus himself saw need to use, so we should appreciate that gift and indulge in it too.

I have recently been reading Meditations on the Passion and Death of Christ, which was written in the 1860's by somebody I had not heard of until a few weeks ago: Father Ignazio del Costato di Gesu. I don't know if it's the Catholicism or the 1860's authorship that makes its reading seem more slow and its wording more flowery than I am accustomed to -- it's probably both -- but it is definitely worth the read, and on page 17 it contains a sentence that strikes me as something every human being needs to read and commit to memory: "The slightest trouble, or the most unimportant business, distracts you from prayer, and the consequences of neglecting to strengthen your soul with that heavenly food is that you become weak and languid, sink down, and fall into sin."

I can't say it in any better than that, so I won't try.

Have a happy, reflective, and thankful Easter weekend everyone.

Resurrection

 

This post was first published in 2021.

Today is Palm Sunday, designated to memorialize a particular day almost 2,000 years ago (specific date unknown) that an itinerant, 33-year-old, rabble-rousing, street rabbi from Nazareth rode a donkey into the city of Jerusalem.

We often hear the phrase "according to Christians" or "according to Christian tradition" grafted onto the beginning of articles which go on to state that during the fifth through seventh days after his arrival in Jerusalem, this street rabbi was arrested, sentenced to death, killed by crucifixion, then rose from the dead... and that he then proceeded to spend 40 days walking around, sermonizing to people and instructing his disciples to become apostles by spending the rest of their lives teaching the world about him... and that after those 40 days were up, he departed Earth not by dying but by ascending (being supernaturally teleported, if you will) into Heaven... and that although he was fully human on Earth, he was also God Himself, having chosen to become flesh and bone and to enter the material world in order to engage in a supreme act of spiritual warfare that transcended the material world and reverberated through the supernatural one.

We cannot blame people for using "according to" language when discussing this account. It is not the kind of account that even sounds possible, much less plausible, at first blush -- especially in our modern age here in the Western world.

Even among believers, many (most?) Christians accept the resurrection account with a faith that is divorced from historical evidence. It is fair for critics to refer to such faith as "blind."

But what if there is historical evidence? (There is.)

And what if the evidence is so strong that an overwhelming majority of historians, including those who are atheists and skeptics, concede to it? (It is.)

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There are six things about which experts in ancient history agree. I hate to sound like a broken record, but I am going to re-emphasize what I said just one paragraph above: Even the experts who are atheists and skeptics agree on the six things, and they do so in overwhelming numbers. The six things are as follows:

One: Jesus was an actual person.

Two: Jesus died by crucifixion during the governance of Pontius Pilate.

Three: Jesus's body was buried in a tomb.

Four: After his body was buried, both friends and enemies of Jesus claimed to have seen him alive again in the flesh... and their belief about what they saw was so strong and sincere that their behavior was radically and permanently changed, and there is no record of a single one of them ever recanting despite being violently persecuted and some of them even being put to death for their claims.

Five: Resurrection claims were made extraordinarily soon after Jesus's death and were opposed by the entire power structure of Jerusalem, both Roman and Jewish.

Six: Despite that resistance by the power structure, Jesus's corpse was never removed from the tomb and presented as evidence that he had not risen, although that should have been exceedingly easy to do. (In other words, the tomb was empty.)

I hope you don't mind hearing my broken record skip yet again, but now I'm going to repeat that these six things are agreed upon even by atheists and skeptics who are experts in the field of ancient history. They are accepted as being true even by professionals who doubt the overall accuracy of the Bible.

Of course this does not prove that Jesus rose from the dead, not in the conventional sense that to "prove" something means to confirm it with absolute, one hundred percent certainty. But then again, nothing can be proved to that degree of certainty.

People earnestly and fairly disagree about whether or not Jesus was resurrected, and it's not like there are no reasons to question it. Dead bodies are known to stay dead, after all. But in my humble opinion, if anybody wants to engage in a serious and objective discussion about this topic, he must should acknowledge and account for all six of the above points. I find it noteworthy that after 2,000 years of discussion, debate, disagreement, scholarship, scientific advances, technological advances, archaeological research, and so on, literally no theory other than resurrection has been offered that can account for all six.

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The lack of "sufficient alternative" theories is certainly not for lack of trying.

Plenty of alternate theories have been proposed, including the swoon theory, hallucination theory, and stolen body theory, to give just three examples. But while all of the alternates account for some of the six points mentioned above, none of them account for all six. The resurrection theory stands alone.

Resurrection alone accounts for all of the accepted historical evidence. Resurrection alone does so without simply rejecting other theories out of hand. Resurrection alone does so without the luxury of merely ignoring alternate theories.

It's easy to blame Western culture in general, and American culture specifically, for the fact that so few people are aware that the case for the resurrection is based on evidence and logic rather than gullibility and superstition, and it is not inaccurate to cast such blame. However, we must blame the church -- i.e., ourselves -- for the fact that Western and American culture has come to this pass.

The reason millions of people, including millions of believers, are clueless about the strong case for the resurrection is that they have never heard it. And the reason they've never heard it is that churches don't teach it to their own congregations.

This is not merely shameful, it is scandalous. It results in people being told from youth to "believe in Jesus" but never being educated as to why they should believe. And so, when they inevitably have questions or doubts and when they inevitably encounter atheist arguments and competing religious claims, their faith often crumbles. They have been set up to fail, sent into battle without armor, tossed into the ocean without a lifejacket, or any other long-odds analogy you want to use.

Why should parents who fail to educate their own children about this topic turn around and criticize "America" for "removing God from the schools"? Why should pastors who fail to educate their own parishioners about this topic turn around and criticize "the culture" for not understanding Christianity or not respecting it?

If you choose to spend the night naked in the snow, you should not be surprised to find yourself with hypothermia come dawn.

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The week that begins today is called Holy Week. Good Friday is on the horizon and Easter is just beyond, ready to send up its rays next Sunday morning.

I think those of us who believe in God -- and especially those of us who believe Jesus rose from the dead twenty centuries ago -- should treat this week as a call to carry ourselves with confidence and without timidity, but also without arrogance.

Like clockwork, Holy Week brings an abundance of documentaries and magazines that superficially acknowledge Easter while unsubtly casting doubt on whether it commemorates an actual event. Christians often respond to these "mainstream media" provocations with irritation or defensiveness, or by withdrawing from the "secular" conversation. But we should not. Instead we should relish these provocations and relish this week, for they present us with a golden opportunity to explain the rational foundations of our faith.

We should take this opportunity and offer an explanation respectfully and cheerfully. It's an almost ironclad guarantee that any explanation other than "I feel it in my heart" will fall upon ears that have never heard it before; and thus it will be heard by people who currently have no idea there is any evidence-based reason for believing in Christianity. 

At the end of the day, when people reject the historicity of Jesus's resurrection, their logical reasoning usually hinges solely on the pre-supposition that nothing supernatural can be real. But if that one pre-supposition gets removed and a person admits that "supernatural" does not equal "impossible," the philosophical ground on which he stands will, by definition, shift beneath his feet. That is a game-changer because it means the historical evidence for the resurrection must be dealt with in order to continue any investigation -- and the historical evidence itself is an aggregate doozy of a game-changer.

At all times, however, we believers need to remember that very few human beings are wired to remain calm, cool, collected, and accepting when game-changers arrive on the scene and challenge their worldview. If we mention something and somebody reacts negatively, we need to remember that we would probably react the same way if the roles were reversed. 

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There are of course other questions non-believers can raise about Christianity. Why does evil exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do children sometimes get cancer? Why do natural disasters occur?

Such questions are valid. Believers have them too, and they are troublesome. But they all fall under a single category that C.S. Lewis dubbed "the problem of pain," and they have nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not God is real, whether or not God is Yahweh as identified in the Bible, whether or not Jesus rose from the dead, et al.

The problem of pain is a serious one, but it happens to be the only one that believers must wrestle with in the great question of theism versus atheism -- as indicated by the fact that even atheists like Richard Dawkins have recently been reduced to uttering phrases like "the universe has the appearance of design" when they are confronted with evidence. (emphasis mine)

And the problem of pain happens to be one that every religion must grapple with.

Christianity is unique in that it builds its foundation on the singular event of Jesus rising from the dead... and has built its foundation on that event since the early days when it could have been easily disproved... and yet it grew into the world's largest and most far-reaching religion, and remains so to this day.

As Holy Week unfolds we should be gracious, and should not be in anyone's face, but at the same time we should be transparent and unafraid and unashamed.

We must not allow anyone to get away with suggesting that we are playing with a weak hand, for nothing could be further from the truth.

Note: For the sake of time and space, I did not use this post to specifically tackle each alternate theory that has been offered to address "the six points." Instead I simply (and correctly) stated that none of them explain all six points. If you want to learn more about the alternate theories and why they don't suffice, good resources include writings and/or lectures by Michael Licona, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, J. Warner Wallace, Nabeel Qureshi, and many others. This one by Peter Kreeft is especially good for being both succinct and thorough.

Spring Equinox

Here in the Eastern Time Zone, the vernal equinox occurred this morning at 11:33 -- so here are some thoughts about spring, on its first day:

I love how it is often warm and rarely humid.

I love that bright, shimmering shade of green that new leaves give to old trees.

I love how wildflowers turn ordinary roadsides into vivid profusions of color and life.

I love going swimming with my kids again, and seeing how Parker runs through the outdoors (see above!).

I love sitting outside in the afternoon (and, before I quit drinking, sucking down a margarita) beneath a cloudless blue sky.

I love spring training baseball.

And finally, I am riveted by the most intense pursuit in all of sports: the NHL playoffs.

St. Paddy's Day

My drinking days are now behind me but I still enjoy the quirkiness of St.Patrick's Day, so I decided to re-post this piece from eight years ago:

As a child growing up in the U.S., you are told that St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland (true) and that he drove the snakes out of Ireland (false). You are also told that wearing green is the main point of the holiday that bears his name, with failure to do so resulting in you getting pinched.

As you grow up you see the snakes story for the crock it is, and based on your observations (and eventually on your experiences) you come to believe that the main point of St. Patrick's Day is pounding sipping Guinness before and after stuffing yourself with dining on shepherd's pie.

In many ways, St. Patrick's Day is one oddity of a holiday. It celebrates a genuine Catholic saint, but few of us know anything about him other than the fact that people celebrate him by getting drunk every March 17th... And most of us who celebrate him in the U.S. are not Catholic, instead identifying ourselves as Protestant or even agnostic... And although the holiday is specifically tied to an island with a population smaller than New York City's, it is celebrated around the entire friggin' globe.

Jaded, fortysomething Americans such as myself like to say (while consuming a pint of Murphy's Stout and ordering a round of green Bud Light) that St. Patrick's Day is an American construct gussied up in Irish drag. We like to say that it has no real ties to religion, that it goes unobserved in "the old country," and that it is nothing more than an excuse for our alcoholic countrymen to get falling down drunk and chalk it up as "tradition." But we are wrong -- wrong! -- because the Vatican made it an official holiday way back in the 1600's. Even the gluttony/drunkenness thing has some churchy basis when you consider that on March 17th the Vatican lifts the Lenten restrictions on drinking alcohol and eating.

Perhaps the diaspora of Irish people explains part of St. Patrick's Day's wide appeal, since the sheer size and extent of their dispersal makes the scattering of Jews from the Holy Land seem trifling.

Long ago I remember hearing that there were 4 million people living in Ireland and 44 million Irish people living in the United States... Huge percentages of the populations in Canada's Atlantic provinces, especially Newfoundland and Labrador, are made up of people from Irish stock... An estimated one million people of Irish ancestry reside in Argentina...Ireland accounts for the second largest ancestry group in Australia... etc. etc.

When you consider the outsize influence Ireland's diaspora has had on the world, you really start to appreciate the role Irish genealogy plays in our affairs. We know the Beatles as an English band, but all of them except Ringo trace their ancestry to Ireland, not Liverpool...Oscar Wilde made his mark as London's biggest playwright, but was born in Dublin...John Wayne came from Irish stock and so did Maureen O'Hara, the smoking-hot redhead who often starred alongside him and is still alive and kicking at the age of 93.

In the decisive decade of the Cold War, America's president was Ronald Reagan and Canada's prime minister was Brian Mulroney. Both were Irish by blood, and together they helped hasten the end of the Soviet Union. In the following decade, Irish-by-blood Tony Blair became the most influential British Prime Minister of the post-Thatcher era.

In the sports world, seemingly white-as-can-be boxing champ Jack Dempsey was an American of Irish descent -- and so was seemingly black-as-can-be boxing champ Muhammad Ali, whose great-grandfather was born in County Clare, on Ireland's west coast, before moving to America.

Still, genealogy and diaspora can't completely explain the global reach of St. Patrick's Day. Not when Japan (yes, Japan!) celebrates it not just on March 17th but all month long. Not when Russia's notoriously xenophobic government plays a part in staging an annual St. Patrick's Day parade in Moscow. And not when prickly French Montreal also hosts a parade.

Some things just can't be explained. And it's often better that way.

 

About "The" Book, Part Eight

Some of the Bible's books are so famous that knowledge of them is almost universal. Others, not so much.

People who have never opened a Bible and never intend to are nonetheless aware that its first book is Genesis. They are also aware that its second book, Exodus, describes the Hebrews' escape from Egypt and 40-year journey to the Promised Land. They are so aware of these books that most of them have properly used their titles as nouns in casual conversation, referring to something's beginning as its genesis and to some long journey or transformation as an exodus.

Then there are books like Habakkuk and Philemon. If those two don't ring a bell, don't feel ashamed. They're in the Bible but many believers probably wouldn't recognize their titles if you mentioned them in passing.

Which brings me to Titus. Over the years I have seen it sitting there in the table of contents, and several times I've seen its actual text fleet across my field of vision while rifling through the New Testament looking for something else. Titus is easy to miss, partly because it doesn't get quoted on tee-shirts and coffee mugs but mostly because it is extraordinarily short:

The above photo is from a pew bible, which is bareboned by definition, but even my ESV Archaeology Study Bible can't get Titus's text to occupy more than three pages despite fattening it up with large font, study notes, and a pair of sidebar mini-articles.

I read Titus for the first time last Saturday for the simple reason that I thought: Why not? I wonder what it says. And I can tell you that it scores high on the bang-for-buck-o-meter.

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As with every book in the Bible, it is important to understand Titus's historical context.

Verse Ten of Chapter One opens with a warning that can be applied to every social or work setting -- "For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers" -- and then it careens into six words that will sound exceedingly strange if you are unfamiliar with history: "especially those of the circumcision party."

Because Jewish males have been circumcised as infants going back to time immemorial, circumcised genitalia was a visual indicator that a man was a Jew in ancient times. Because Christianity involves a fulfillment of the Judaic faith by bringing Gentiles to God in order to fulfill God's plan for humanity, the early days of the Christian church featured some debate about whether Gentile men should get circumcised when they commit their lives to God. 

The biblical book called Titus is one of Paul's epistles (letters) that he addressed to specific leaders of new churches in various parts of the Greco-Roman world. Composed about 30 years after Jesus's crucifixion, it was sent to a man named Titus who was charged with evangelizing the inhabitants of Crete. Titus needed to be aware of false teachings that opponents of the faith might try to spread, and thus "the circumcision party" refers not to some weird event at which converts were subjected to a torturous initiation rite, but rather to people who claimed that converts should be required to get circumcised. 

Those people's insistence on convert circumcision was not the big problem, however. That was merely a symptom. The big problem was their overarching demand that Gentiles under the new covenant be subjected to the same pharisaical laws that were applied (and often abused) to ethnic Jews under the old one. Paul considered those people's demand to be heretical, having previously referred to it in Galatians as "a different gospel" that is "contrary to the one you received" and whose teachers should "be accursed." Knowing this makes it clear why he advises in Titus 1:13-14 to "rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth."

(Twenty-first century disclaimer: Paul himself was Jewish and was not being an ethnocentric bigot when he said "Jewish myths." He was referring not to Judaic people but to certain aspects of the Judaic religion, and his contemporary audience knew that. So if you are currently a college student or member of America's politically correct white intelligentsia, you may now arise from your fainting couch and resume reading.)

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A reader with an emotional, pre-existing devotion to certain denominational beliefs might easily veer off course if he were to read Titus without paying close attention.

Stressing the importance of good church leadership, Paul instructs Titus to "appoint elders in every town" and then qualifies that by saying "if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife..." Sadly, some people are always itching for a Protestant-Catholic cat fight and might take the phrase "husband of one wife" and use it to start claiming that today's Roman Catholic Church engages in heresy when it requires its priests to be celibate. Such people should be asked to raise the topic of priestly celibacy another time, since Paul here was referring not to parish-specific priests but to town-specific "elders" and made no mention whatsoever of sex.

Many of those same people will react to Chapter Three like an alley cat who just ingested a few mouthfuls of catnip. One of the great misunderstandings between overzealous Protestants and overzealous Catholics is the former's (false) claim that Catholics teach "works-based" salvation and the latter's (false) claim that Protestants "ignore the importance of works." People from the latter camp might be prone to believe they've found confirmation of support for their claim when they read in Titus 3:1 that we are "to be ready for every good work," and also in 3:8 when they read that "those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works."

In between, however, people from the former camp might be prone to believe they've found confirmation of support for their claim when they read in 3:5 that God "saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy..." And of course, overzealous Calvinist Protestants are likely to find a way to construe 3:5 as confirmation of support for their belief that God predestines everybody to salvation or damnation before they are even born.

All of which goes to show why it's so important when studying an ancient text to remove your filters and pay attention to every word... while remembering the context in which it was written... and also remembering to whom, and by whom, it was written.

Which is very, very, very hard to do. We are all predisposed to certain conclusions, and we are all tempted to leapfrog straight to them when we perceive a fitting opportunity to do so.

But leapfrogging springs you up in the air for a bit, and while you're up there you might not see a beautiful flower on the ground that you were supposed to stop and smell.

I think the dichotomy between faith and works is a false one, not a real one, but many people strongly disagree with me about that. Those whose theological ears are highly tuned to the "real dichotomy pitch" might overlook the importance of some other lessons interwoven into Chapter Three, such as when Paul counsels in 3:2 to "speak evil of no one" and "show perfect courtesy to all people" (emphasis added); and when he stresses in 3:3 that "we ourselves were once foolish...slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy"; and especially when he admonishes in 3:9 to "avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless."

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There is a lot going on in Titus.

The college kids and white intelligentsia I chided earlier will might instinctively and wrongly reach for smelling salts when they encounter the word "submissive" in Chapter Two.

As somebody who enjoyed reading Bartlett's even as a kid, I have a fondness for great quotes and therefore was thrilled to come across this pearl from 1:15: "To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure..."

On a lighter note, I found it amusing that Titus bluntly says a man must not be "a drunkard" (1:7) yet takes a more nuanced approach when it comes to women by saying they must not be "slaves to much wine" (2:3, emphasis added).

There are a couple other things in The Epistle of Paul to Titus that I would like to elaborate on... but I am not skilled at keeping things brief, and this blog post already contains more paragraphs than the epistle itself, so for now I think I'll just call it a day!

To be continued...

Note #1: Since I mentioned priestly celibacy I feel like I should say that I'm Methodist, not Catholic, and have spent no time at all thinking about whether priestly celibacy is biblical, unbiblical, smart, stupid, or neutral.

Note #2: If you care to read the previous installments in this series, they are here: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, and Seven.

MLK, Born Today

Next Monday is set aside as Martin Luther King Day. But today is his real birthday, and he would be turning 93 had he not been met by an assassin's bullet on that "early morning April 4" (though with apologies to Bono, it was actually in the evening when the shot rang out in the Memphis sky).

But I digress. Rather than wait until the generic third-Monday government-declared day of recognition, here are some of MLK's best quotes:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law…This would lead to anarchy…I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Anyone who lives in the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.

...I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo…If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal.

I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. The note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

…we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

A man can’t sit on your back unless it’s bent.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: (1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, (2) negotiation, (3) self-purification, and (4) direct action.

…right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

…I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom…If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me. I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader, but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all of their scintillating beauty.