I don’t know how it is for everyone else, but there are books that stick with me in a way that I find I am returning back to their ideas over and over again years after I’ve read it. One of those books for me is ‘The Civil War as a Theological Crisis’ by Mark Noll. The book is full of super interesting points, but the thing that stuck with me most was realizing that there was a significant branch of the church in America that not only permitted race based slavery to exist, but believed that defending its existence was the same as defending the Bible itself. These pastors and theologians believed they were championing the “plain reading of scripture”, and that abolitionists were leading the country astray. The Confederate Christians were prayerful, earnest, and committed to a theology that taught them that certain people were subhuman.
This has stuck with me because (along with any number of other eras in Christian history), it is very obvious that being earnest is not enough. It is clear that reading the Bible regularly will not keep me from using it to do heinous actions. Sunday church attendance will not keep me from idolatry, and heartfelt worship and prayer does not guarantee that I am theologically and morally sound. Even on fundamental issues like whether or not the oppressed are also made in the full image of God.
Maybe the pro-slavery Christians were willfully ignorant. Perhaps each and every one of them had taken an active step in hardening their hearts against the cries of injustice around them. There has to have been some of that, because I can’t believe that the Spirit is entirely passive when such widespread abuse takes place. But it is hard to think that was true of each and every person. Or maybe blame lies at the top, with prominent theologians and pastors who crafted this anti-Christian theology, and everyone else was a victim of being fed a false gospel. That they didn’t know any different. That’s possible, although I don’t think we can let everyone off the hook.
In the end, God will be the one who judges each individual, and I’ll leave it to him to sort out how justice, grace, mercy, and wrath all apply to these folks. For me, though, it is haunting to know just how wrong earnest people can be. That so many people could have been sincerely praying for God to help them grow in grace, to reveal sin in their lives, and to miss such a glaring and obvious evil. Earnestness is, I think, a necessary condition for us to grow in righteousness. But it is very clearly not sufficient.
No, there must also be diligence in self examination. No one is so good that they won’t have blind spots, and I have to be active in searching my own heart and soul to see what is still amiss. There must also be an ongoing pursuit of learning more, of being willing to be corrected. We are consistently invited to have immovable opinions on more and more things with less and less knowledge about them. Just today I was reading some Thomas Merton, and this quote about unthinkingly belonging to a crowd hit me:
Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t hear, he doesn’t think. He does not act, he is pushed. He does not talk, he produces conventional sounds when stimulated by the appropriate noises. He does not think, he secretes clichés.
This invites humility. Since I am very capable of being wrong, in a world that invites me to regurgitate hot takes (or secrete cliches), I must be open to hearing from others where I could be misled. I am prone to want to be right, and to be found among the “right” people. So I have to be dilligent to hear and see where I might be incredibly wrong.
This doesn’t mean, though, that there is no room to speak up about evil. Humility doesn’t mean we never stand on principles. But the fact that “earnest isn’t enough” allows me to address evil without needing to disagnose intentions. People who do bad things aren’t a bunch of Voldemorts and Gargamels. Just like the pro-slavery Christians, I think there are people who have so often tuned out the still small voice of God that they exclusively pursue their own desires instead of the needs of others. Some even might think they are doing good! So I think the right thing to do is denounce evil actions as they exist. I can name wrongdoing, and then proclaim the Gospel – that sin and death do not get the last word, that in Christ all things are being made new, including my own arrogant self. And then invite us all to repent, to turn away from sin, and to walk in newness of life.
By all means, be earnest. But add to it humility and repentance and diligence, so that you don’t look back and discover that you were fighting against Goodness all along.