Tried With Fire

"In 1896, W.E.B. Du Bois presented his PhD dissertation to the faculty at Harvard University. His dissertation was titled "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the United States of America, 1638-1870." At the conclusion of this work, Du Bois offered a "Lesson for Americans." Du Bois's lesson began with the observation that Americans are not known for being a people engaged in self-examination. Rather, Du Bois wrote, Americans tend to deny that any major problems exist in their society. If any ills can be found, then Americans seek to find ways to jettison those ills rather than address them and patiently work to answer them. Du Bois wrote that "we have the somewhat inchoate idea that we are not destined to be harassed with great social questions, and that even if we are, and fail to answer them, the fault is with the question and not with us. Consequently, we often congratulate ourselves more on getting rid of a problem than on solving it....

This is one part of The Social Justice Statement that troubles me: WE AFFIRM that some cultures operate on assumptions that are inherently better than those of other cultures because of the biblical truths that inform those worldviews that have produced these distinct assumptions. Those elements of a given culture that reflect divine revelation should be celebrated and promoted. The "inherently better than those of other cultures" seems to fly in the face Paul's declaration in Phil. 3 that he counted all the rights and privileges of being raised as a Hebrew, as dung compared to the surpassing greatness of Christ. He also wrote in Romans that there is no advantage to the Jew or to the Greek because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If this is veiled reference to America, the debate is still out among Christian historians as to whether America is a Christian nation versus Christians being involved in its founding. Also we have to face the moral discon...

"American history reveals ambiguity in Americans' behavior and faithfulness to the principles on which the nation was founded. Americans have been true, false and indifferent to their stated ideals over time. There is no golden age to go back to, no glorious past to recover or to "take back." America consists of Americans who are flawed and fallible human beings. Americans have set themselves on a pursuit of justice, equality, of opportunity and of natural rights and freedoms. But Americans of every generation have continually struggled to understand what those things mean, how they are to be applied and who gets to enjoy them to their fullest extent. Religious people have always been influential in these issues, but even religious people who are dedicated to divine principles sometimes fail to see clearly and act faithfully. All people, including Christians, succumb to selfishness, short-sightedness, violence and vice. The human condition is complex, thus the Ame...

"When it comes to drawing wisdom from the past, we must be careful to discern between making normative moral judgments based on history and reflecting morally on history. McKenzie* emphasized the importance of this distinction, especially for a Christian. Moral judgments based on history are problematic, he said, because they require obedience to history where no divine mandate to do so exists. History is not authoritative, so drawing normative moral lessons from a past golden age of national history is not only unwise; it undermines the authority of Scripture by neglecting it and replacing it with another authority. It also places the person making the moral judgment in an artificially privileged position, so that with the Pharisee he demands others be subject to an extrabiblical source of authority arising from his own selfish motivations. Moral reflection, however, is directed selfward. McKenzie wrote that moral judgment "renders a verdict but requires nothing of the k...