2021: The United Serpent of Ouroboros:
An open letter to some fellow white evangelical Christians
Recently we seem to be living in alternative realities — you and I — like being on the inside of an atom in which particles appear to be in two places at the same time, alternative facts present themselves, two presidents have been elected, and a democratic God has anointed one, while a republican God has anointed another.
“Don’t tread on me!” was our motto as English colonists. But over the past four years The Ouroboros — a powerful serpent devouring itself — seems to be replacing the eagle as our national symbol.
When I arrived here as an immigrant from South Africa in 1977, Carter jokes were beginning to make the rounds, and Reagan was preparing to launch his Republican revolution against liberal Democrats and the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union. But back then, facts were facts, and Walter Cronkite assured us each evening that we all lived in the same reality and “that’s the way it was!”
But I also remember my first visit to the Lincoln Memorial as a young immigrant — and etched into the granite I discovered a shattered America I had never seen before. It was Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address, given after the four bloodiest years in American history. I lingered here before these words until the sun began to set and my family had left to visit other monuments. I felt them with my fingers, and I gazed up at the gaunt author sitting like an ancient god before me.
His words pressed themselves into my brain. I tried to apply them to my own broken country — and they didn’t quite fit. But the tragedy of broken Christians everywhere trying to summon God onto their side was evident in these words. Both North and South, lamented Lincoln, “read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other…
[But] The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
It was true in 1865. And it is true in 2021. My Christian tribe prays in broken prayers. Their hermeneutic is fallen.
Lincoln went on to confess the sins of both the North and the South. His words shocked me. Was not the South the guilty party here? — I thought. But that was not the way Lincoln saw it. I read on…
He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense [of slavery]came…Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
The North, suggested Lincoln, was perhaps just as much to blame as the South. And for both, this Civil War was a painful atonement; a purging; a price both had to pay for the horrors the nation had inflicted upon the slaves.
I have been thinking a lot about this speech in the last few months. And I am saddened by the deep rift which has — once again — appeared within the body of Christ these past four years — and specifically between white and black evangelicals (70% of blacks saw Biden as God’s choice for this nation, while 75% of whites saw Trump as God’s choice). But we barely speak of this rift — at least here in Kansas. We remain in our own bubbles (Democrat and Republican) convinced that we have correctly heard God’s voice; convinced that He has anointed our candidate — not theirs.
We need another Lincoln.
As a white Christian surrounded by white Christians in rural Kansas — I have felt out of touch with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ (particularly from minority and Catholic backgrounds). And as CS Lewis said, I yearn to “see through other eyes.”
So let me at least try:
Firstly, I am grateful for the many good things which President Trump championed these past four years, particularly prison reform, religious rights, free speech, and due process. We desperately needed a course correction after a decade of overweening political correctness and “big brother” hyper-sensitivity training.
And secondly, I am saddened by the incessant vitriol and mockery of the mainstream press towards our president these past four years — starting on day one. They never gave him a chance, refused to acknowledge the good in him, and focused incessantly on the bad. MSNBC, in particular, was toxic in its hatred towards him.
But ultimately, I still grieve and am saddened by Trump’s refusal to accept the judgement of our “Referees” in this great democracy — who, in over 40 court cases, determined that there was insufficient evidence of corruption to overturn the vote.
His refusal to respect this judgement of our appointed “Refs” created national chaos, damaged our democracy, and even our trust in Truth itself. With a bit of humility, he might have been great. But like a King Snake, he began to eat himself.
We need another Lincoln.
I know Joseph Biden is no Lincoln. But will you pray with me that he will help unite us? It has been said that no unity is possible without repentance. And there’s the rub. That’s what sticks in our throat. We cannot see the log in our eye because the splinter in our neighbor’s eye is so offensive. And that is why we need to pray for President Biden. Or the Ouroboros will replace the Eagle as our national symbol.
Lincoln concluded:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
