FollowBy Dan Amos
Commuting is a painful necessity of working, but good can come from it. As an example, I offer the last book I listened to — A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). His writing made me think about how we as a nation have come to where we are today.
Frederick was born into slavery in the early 19th century. In captivity he lived as far north as Baltimore. His writing reveals an intelligent man who taught himself to read as a boy and taught others from the New Testament. Jesus found him and claimed him as His own. This is clear in his writing, even as he rails against the pastors, church board members, and regular attenders who persecuted him and the other people tortured in slavery. He clearly distinguished between Christ’s Church and the American church that permitted, encouraged, or merely stayed silent against slavery.
He observed that the sin of slaveholding was a wickedness that deformed the spirit and made the practitioner miserable. As a boy, he was under the detention of a husband and wife, though the wife was kind and began his lessons in reading. Her husband ended the lessons and, as time wore on, she became mean and hateful towards him and all slaves. The sin of slavery infected her entire being.
His account of the cost of sin upon the nation is one we can recognize that we still suffer from today. In our hate for our fellow man, we have hated ourselves and our Creator. We have created divisions between ourselves and have destroyed the helpless and unwanted. We are in a time now where evil is called good and good is called evil. As individuals and as a body, we must measure good and evil not by society, but by the Word of God.
Frederick lived until 1895 and, by all accounts, he will be among the great crowd in Heaven. His was a difficult story to listen to, but powerful in its redemption and his reliance on our common Redeemer. If you read it or listen to it (available at the Pierce County Library), I would love to hear your opinion.
Views – 77