Words I’ve Heard Before

It was words I’d heard before. It was a mindset I was raised with: but why did it bother me so strongly this time?

I was sitting in a church service (not my church, but a church I respect), and it was a new speaker. I’ve never met him, but he was doing a good job working through the book of Deuteronomy. As we were reading over laws that God had given the Israelites, the speaker mentioned how he’d been reading a book by a very conservative author (one I’d grown up knowing in a very conservative homeschool group). This speaker noted how this book pointed out how at one time in our American history, the main law books used included a Bible, and how every law could be traced back to Scripture.

He paused, signed, and said, “How far things have changed.” With whole-hearted conviction he added, “I wish we could go back to that.”

It was words I’d heard before. It was a mindset I was raised with: but why did it bother me so strongly this time?

I froze. I side-eyed the one Black woman in the audience. She was still as well.

I understood the speaker completely. I’d been the speaker for most of my life. But something changed. I married a Black man. And honestly, that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until I had children. Children, that in America, are considered Black.

Now, the speaker’s words have changed, because I have changed. “Every law used to be based in Scripture.” I now hear: “Including all of the laws that said your family wasn’t human…well, perhaps 3/5ths human.”

“How far things have changed.” I now hear: “Things are just so much worse now than ever before: laws are so unscriptural now.”

“I wish we could go back to that.” I now hear: “I wish we could go back to that: you know, when it was illegal for you to marry your husband. When your children would be considered abominations. Back to when your family was enslaved.”

I know that is NOT what the speaker meant. But for anyone who has someone they love so much that they filter life through the ramifications of that love and that person: you can’t NOT add to those words.

I am working to give the speaker grace. He didn’t mean it. He wasn’t thinking of slavery when thinking of past laws. But that is because HE wasn’t intimately affected by slavery. It wasn’t HIS family.

The truth is, the past in the USA was pretty good to a lot of white people (white men especially). When things get harder, it is really easy to look back with rose-colored glasses and wish to go back. For those who didn’t have a good past in the USA, when things are hard, it is much easier to look forward and hope for a better future.

I don’t know the speaker well enough to have this conversation with him. Maybe one day I will. But my heart aches that so many of us white American Christians don’t understand the taint of slavery on our history. I find it difficult to make statements like “All of our laws were based on Scripture.” Are you saying that Scripture condones and promotes race-based chattel slavery? Then you are serving a different god. It is important to admit that just like today, back then they got some pretty major stuff wrong. Dead wrong.

Admitting the truth that our founding fathers did not put into law a correct view of the image of God being stamped fully and equally on every human being—male or female, whatever the ethnicity—is as important as admitting that our current laws are flawed. Can we admit that the slogan “Make America Great Again” is confusing, because at what time in American history was America a great place for everyone in my multicultural family?

Our hope has never lived in the past, but in the present and future that is lived looking to God.