Many of my fellow Christians consider Robert E. Lee to be a devout believer, a strong leader. A good man. He spoke regularly to his troops about the mercies of God and the importance of compassion, begging them to eschew the spiritual poison of hatred. To a point, he believed everything that my camp believes about sin, salvation, morality, church gatherings, and, most importantly, the Bible.
“I prefer the Bible to any other book.There is enough in that, to satisfy the most ardent thirst for knowledge; to open the way to true wisdom; and to teach the only road to salvation and eternal happiness. It is not above human comprehension, and is sufficient to satisfy all its desires.”
His endorsement comforts us, especially in a time when Bible-believing Christianity is rapidly growing in unpopularity. We’ve managed to forgive his involvement in the Civil war, chattel slavery, and general resistance to America’s greatest abolition movement, as we have for many others who sacrificed everything for our freedom while patronizing America’s oldest sin.
But leaving aside the myriad debates on his merits as a human, it is important to note Robert Lee’s devout racism. He was a simple man, but utterly swept away by his culture’s belief that Blacks weren’t on equal footing with whites, in desperate need of the many benefits of slavery. Parroting Jefferson Davis, he wrote:
“The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms &
tempests of fiery Controversy.”
According to many of his slaves, Lee was no stranger to harsh punishment. It was, to him, a necessary evil. As a Southerner, he marinated in the soul-numbing insanity of his world; whips, chains, lynchings, and the general degradation of the antebellum South. But to him, Blacks were so far afield that this was a requirement if they were to find any future prosperity.
How does a devout, upstanding, Bible-believing Christian come to the belief that such outright torture is some kind of blessing?
All of this is problematic for today’s Christian, illustrating a fundamental flaw in our ability to judge what is right and wrong. If God and the veracity of Christian faith are what we claim, shouldn’t it insulate us from this kind of evil? Sure, we’ll never be perfect, and culture has always been a powerful force, but slavery? How did so many of our spiritual forebears get swept away in such a repulsive current? And what does that say about the currents we find ourselves in today?
As America’s racial justice movement continues to plod forward, we find ourselves, once again, standing in opposition – a powerful adversary, utterly convinced of our righteous posture. After 4 years of the most Godless administration our 20-year-ago minds could ever imagine, we’ve politically segregated ourselves, now labelling this movement a tool of the enemy. A nation-damning liberal agenda.
We’re also one of the biggest cross-sections of American culture, convinced that COVID-19 lies somewhere between a hoax and nothing to worry about, or that the CDC’s infection/death rates are some kind of scam intended to overthrow a good president. To top it off, we attended a riot, storming the law and order that seemed to be much more important during the George Floyd protests of last summer.
Unfortunately, this won’t be the last you’ll hear from us.
We are astray, continuing to drive nails into the coffin of our legitimacy. But the root of our problem is not political, it’s theological, derived from our interpretation of multiple accounts in holy writ that suggest a connection between truth, God, and us. According to the New Testament, the very “Spirit of God,” or, “Holy Spirit,” rests upon anyone who is in a “right relationship” with God, occupying the deepest parts of their soul. The purpose of this union is to encourage, comfort, and guide the bearer in her understanding of what is good, right, wrong, etc.
Conservative Evangelicals aren’t the only ones who embrace this aspect of theology, commonly referred to as “pneumatology;” it is prevalent throughout millenia of Christian thought: St. Paul, Augustine, Eusebius, Martin Luther, Robert Lee, Billy Graham, MLK, Pope Francis, and Justin Bieber all share this belief.
The idea that a mere mortal can have such close connection with the head deity is unheard of in ancient religious thought. The Old Testament itself doesn’t play so loosely with its treatment of pneumatology. Though it foretells of a day when “the Spirit of God will be poured out unto all humanity,” these ancient Jewish scriptures only reserve its outpouring for the holiest people.
Many Evangelicals believe that this arrangement is free, available to anyone who wants it, but whatever payment is required in exchange is too expensive for us humans. So, God paid the bill, removing any barrier between us and Him. Whatever the Holy Spirit is, it is now available to everyone, without condition or limitation. By proxy, this annihilates the idea that one person is holier than another. All of humanity is now “worthy,” all merit systems are null and void.
But that’s a hard pill to swallow. It’s easier, and much more self-redemptive to believe that our station with God is earned. Any “right relationship” is the result of hard work, the right beliefs, moral heroics, advanced Bible knowledge, etc. It’s comforting to believe that we’re doing it better than everybody else, occupying the top of America’s spiritual food chain by little more than our own deeds, and that God has rewarded us. From here, we slip quietly into the idea that we’re better, cleaner, smarter, and, for this discussion, more politically savvy than everyone else.
This clears the way for a legion of unholy ideas (what the Bible also calls “spirits”) to enter our heads. Emboldened by our belief about God, Spirit, and truth, and greased by our many iterations of segregation, the errant Christian mind goes unchallenged. Ideas that don’t find their origin within our camp clearly didn’t originate with God, and must be fake. Now, anyone who doesn’t think like we do has become the enemy, and the only people who’ll listen to us are us.
This has gotten so bad that our politics and activism scare people, who in turn scare us. We’re convinced, more than we’ve ever been, that the non-Christian world poses some kind of threat. As such, any politician who’ll speak our language, oppose abortion, and utter the sacred words, “ALL LIVES MATTER!” while fondling our most coveted religious symbol will garner immediate trust.
And so we remain, even after the Capitol riot, a fundamental cog in Donald Trump’s support base. I’m as baffled by this as everyone else. Again, if we’re as right about the Holy Spirit as we think we are, shouldn’t we be insulated from such miscalculation?
Robert E. Lee’s Bible says no. Scripture warns us about the leaven of stupidity and our general potential for error much more frequently than it addresses pneumatology. But a misplaced faith in our ability to discern truth is powerfully seductive; a fundamental part of our culture, our identity. It sets us apart from non-Christians and makes our world seem safer, more controllable.
We won’t be letting go of it anytime soon.
Robert Lee’s picnic on the Devil’s lawn should warn us, in tandem with Evangelicalism’s decline into rabid unpopularity and myriad other examples of faith in error throughout history – that we are just as capable of batting for the wrong team as anyone else.
Maybe more so, because in one, single regard, our error is different than everyone else’s. It is sanctioned by God.
As a believer in Christ’s miracles, I like to think of Jesus as having occasionally enjoyed a belly-shaking laugh over a good, albeit clean, joke with his disciples, rather than always being the stoically serious type of savior.
I find even greater hope in a creator who has a great sense of humor rather than foremost a fire-and-brimstone bad temper. I sometimes wonder how many potential Christians have felt repelled from the faith altogether due to the vocal angry-God-condemnation brand of the religion, perhaps which resembles the God of the Quran and Torah.
Biblical interpretations aside, perhaps God didn’t require the immense bodily suffering by God’s own incarnation in place of that sustained by a sinful humankind as justice/payment for all sin. Might God have become pacifistically turn-the-other-cheek incarnate, performed numerous unmistakable miracles before experiencing a brutal death, followed by his resurrection—all to prove there really was hope for all?
Perhaps Jesus didn’t die FOR humans as payment for our sins (the greatest mostly resulting from unchecked testosterone rushes), but rather his vicious murder occurred BECAUSE of humans’ seriously flawed nature; and due to his not behaving in accordance to corrupted human conduct, particularly he was nowhere near to being the blood-thirsty vengeful behemoth so many wanted or needed—and so many Christians still do to this day—their savior to be and therefore believed he’d have to be?