SCRIPTURE: For only when you come to judge the earth will people learn what is right. Your kindness to the wicked does not make them do good. Although others do right, the wicked keep doing wrong and take no notice of the Lord’s majesty. Isaiah 26:9-10 NLT
QUOTE: “Thus, for instance, the American Government and the American Constitution are spoken of in a manner which would naturally lead the hearer to believe that one is identical with the other; when the truth is, they are distinct in character as is a ship and a compass. The one may point right and the other steer wrong. A chart is one thing, the course of the vessel is another. The Constitution may be right, the Government is wrong. If the Government has been governed by mean, sordid, and wicked passions, it does not follow that the Constitution is mean, sordid, and wicked.” Frederick Douglass, 1860
THOUGHT: Frederick Douglass escaped slavery to become the greatest abolitionist of his time. In 1851 he parted ways with the American Anti-Slavery Society over the issue of the Constitution. He saw it as the means to freedom and dedicated his life to holding clay feet to the fire he found there. To him, it was a compass, pointing the way accurately, while the politicians who wielded it might be on ships going the wrong direction. Don’t confuse the two, he would say.
Our national moment today begs us to consider whether we will board ships going the wrong direction or, like a buoy in a storm, hold to the compass that can take us home.
Isaiah declared kindness to the wicked does not make them do good, that they just keep on moving, failing to notice even God. I am not advocating against kindness, in fact I need to learn more about how God uses kindness to lead us to repentance, but something besides a kindness that pacifies or allows wicked ideologies to roll over the truths we hold to be self-evident is necessary.
We must learn the Constitution and hold clay feet to the fire we find there, or be obliged to keep our silence until the day we wish we hadn’t.
PRAYER: Oh God, give us courage and wisdom in our own human hour. On earth as it is in heaven. Your will be done in us, and in our nation.
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Blogger Amy Clemens is the author of Walking When You’d Rather Fly: Meditations on Faith After the Fall. In it she explores childhood sexual abuse and how it impacted her faith (or lack thereof) for four decades. You’ll find not only her story, but better yet, the Big Story of God.
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