In 1852, Frederick Douglass boldly spoke out against a clear, irrefutable evil: American slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act. The aim of his attack wasn’t the founding of the United States, or the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, or the Declaration of Independence. He went out of his way to praise those things. What he took aim at was the evil of slavery that threatened to turn all those good things into a sham. He boldly named the sin, he laid it bare in all its hideousness, but he also spoke with unbridled optimism in the great American experiment that would soon bring an end to the slave trade. It was his work, along with other abolitionists and President Abraham Lincoln, that we eventually ended slavery. The United States was so committed to it that hundreds of thousands of soldiers gave their lives to free the millions of slaves they never even knew.
By contrast, certain modern day talking heads like Joy Reid (and others) are pushing an entirely different narrative that attempts to paint the United States with nothing but the colors of racism, misogyny, colonialism, and patriarchy. But, as we see with the 1619 Project, they can’t appeal to actual history to justify their narrative. They have to distort and lie about the facts of history. The 1619 Project itself says it is trying to “reframe the country’s history” by giving a new origin story, centered around the idea that slavery and racism is the root cause of everything in America. And if you do not agree with that claim, you are accused to trying to whitewash US History completely and sweeping the ugly history of slavery and racism under the rug. Nothing can be further from the truth. The goal should be to view history, both the good things and bad things, as truthfully as possible. Pushing extremist distortions of that history should be rejected.
The United States, like any country, is not perfect. But when seen against the backdrop of history, it is pretty amazing. It set up an entirely new framework for government that has allowed people to live in a free, prosperous society. It has been so successful, that most countries in the free world have used the United States as their model. Furthermore, despite the black stain of slavery, we fought a war to end it. And then we passed civil rights legislation to put an end to Jim Crow. The advances we have made in race relations alone has been astounding. You can see pictures from the 1920s of KKK rallies, with thousands of people in white hoods, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. Now, the only people who associate with the KKK are the most ignorant, uneducated rubes, living in small pockets of the south. The KKK has become a joke.
There are so many other things that we can be proud of and thankful for. It has been so great to see all these soccer fans from around the world coming to America for the World Cup simply gushing over how amazing they are finding the United States to be. We in this country have been fed with such a steady diet of “America is racist, misogynist, racist” drivel by the likes of Joy Reid and other activists, that we start seeing everything through that kind of cynical, sarcastic, negative, and yes, unpatriotic lens, to where actual displays of patriotism invite scorn.
What I’ve found is that much of the criticism (if it doesn’t involve simply distorting our history, like the 1619 Project does) involves nothing concrete at all. Just whiny sloganeering and mealy-mouthed bitching: “It’s patriotic to grieve over what has become of our country.” “I don’t hate my country; I just love it enough to admit everything isn’t fine.” “We can love our country and still speak out on corruption, dehumanization, and the war machine.” Of course, we all know the root cause of this attitude is Trump Derangement Syndrome. Because of that, such people simply see everything in a negative light now. A recent CNN poll showed that only 29% of Democrats say they love their country. That number was around 65% under Obama, while over 90% of Republicans consistently say they love their country, regardless of who is president.
If Frederick Douglass were here today, I imagine he would primarily have two thoughts. First, he’d be amazed at how far we have come as a nation and he would celebrate it. Second, he’d say to the mealy-mouthed whiners, “Like what? Be specific! Name the real sin! I boldly spoke out against slavery, and the Fugitive Slave Act. I named the problem and took a rhetorical blowtorch to it because it really was evil. What are you doing? Whining and bitching in the vaguest terms possible? If something is truly sinful and evil, BOLDY SAY WHAT IT IS AND CHALLENGE PEOPLE TO CHANGE IT.”
But they don’t get to anything really specific for one reason. Let’s use one specific example: ICE and illegal immigration. Is enforcing immigration law the equivalent of the Fugitive Slave Act? No. Sending someone back to their home country is not in any way, shape, or form like forcibly kidnapping someone in one country and bringing them to this country to be a slave. Of course, one can argue that is exactly what is happening with the human traffickers who use our porous border to do just that. And that leads to the next question. Is allowing millions of illegals into the country with little or no vetting a wise and responsible thing for the government to do? No. What should be done about the millions who have come in illegally? Aye, there’s the rub! That’s a really difficult problem to tackle. People should debate the specifics about how to tackle that problem but mere sloganeering like “Abolish ICE” and “There are no illegal human beings” accomplish nothing.
Having your patriotism be dependent on your personal feelings about the personality of a single person, the president, is just sad to see. But that has what has happened over the past ten years or so with almost half the country. As Robert DeNiro recently said, they can’t love a country that would elect Donald Trump. I can, because my love of country isn’t reduced to a single candidate or politician. The great things the United States has done doesn’t change whenever a candidate you might not like gets elected.
Frederick Douglass loved the United States and praised its founding documents the Founding Fathers. His love was so robust that he was able to directly and forcefully name the great sin of American slavery and call for change. Although the Joy Reids of the country try to co-opt Douglass into their “I hate everything about America” narrative, we shouldn’t let them, because Douglass’ view of the United States is the polar opposite of that Reid’s and the 1619 Project. He called out a specific, undeniable evil and challenged people to continue the work of the Founding Fathers to address that evil. Today’s mealy-mouthed critics, though, whine and complain in the language of vague slogans and take aim at the country itself. It’s no wonder why so many people who have bought into that false and distorted narrative no longer love their country. The fact is, though, we’re not living in 1852 America anymore. We’re not living in 1925 anymore. We’re not even living in 1963 anymore. We’ve made true progress. We’ve made great progress. Why? Because, despite its flaws, the United States is a great nation. We shouldn’t have the attitude of so-called “progressives” like Joy Reid–that distorted progressivism is nothing less than regressive.
I’ll side with the attitude of Frederick Douglass instead, where actual progress rooted in patriotism is celebrated and honored.
I despise people who twist the words of historical figures to push their own worldview, and it seems to happen a great deal in the political sphere (on both sides, but far more on the political left as far as I can tell). Everyone loves to apply facts to their narrative and not the other way around. My grandfather explained it to me best: The United States of America is not unique in its history of sin, but it is unique in its history of virtue.
Your grandfather sounds like a wise man
We are still slaves, but it is covert, not overt:
https://odysee.com/@woeih:e/Mark-Passio-Government-Is-Slavery:a?src=embed
I have a request for a review. I would like to know what do you think about the work of Antonio Piñero, his work is in spanish but let me sumarize his main points.
1) He belongs to the Jesus Seminar (thats a red flag for me) and he pretty much argues that the Jesus from history is not the same from faith and that Paul invented Christianity
2) He doesnt agree with the scholary consencus (which Im ok with that) my problem is that he makes an imaginary reconstruct about the disciples and Jesus saying things like “Jesus was an armed soldier and was crucified because of that” which that doesnt make sense according to the data
3) He argues that the resurection was made up so the movement can penetrate to the minds of the roman people which that doesnt make
4) He uses a naturalistic metodology that is in line with the Jesus Seminar which is “there is a miracle definetely made up or fiction”
5) He pretty much says that the name of God YHWH comes from four cananite deities
There is more which I find fringe despite him being an academic. I ask you this because you are a scholar and I would like to know your thought on the things he says
To quote another popular atheist, “claims without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
Well, my reaction is pretty simple. I’ve never thought much of the Jesus Seminar. They are as fringe as fringe can be. To say this guy “makes an imaginary reconstruct” is an understatement. I’d much sooner get insight on the historical Jesus from a 16-year-old grocery clerk at the local grocery store.
Pancho, if I may.
The Jesus Seminar are/were a group of very liberal mostly North American scholars and at least one Hollywood director (Paul Verhoeven of “RoboCop” and “Basic Instinct” fame) whose stated goal was to rescue the Christ of history from the Christ of faith. So they had an agenda going into it. At least they were up front about it.
As for the early church inventing the resurrection to recruit Greeks and Romans, your professor needs to check his sources again, because if you were trying to fake a religion centered on Jesus that you hoped to sell to Greeks and Romans, insisting that Jesus was bodily resurrected was the *worst* thing you could do, because at best, the idea of the resurrection of the body was absurd to Greeks and Romans, at worst, downright offensive. The pagan critic Celsus in the 180s AD objected to Christianity on these grounds–and the fact that the chief witness to the resurrection was a hysterical woman, rather than a sober, critical reflective man (there are others but these were two of his biggies). So inventing women witnesses wasn’t going to score you any points with anyone, either.
But all four gospels do it. A bodily resurrection–there actually was no other kind in the ancient world–and women witnesses.
Pax.
Lee.
Yeah, those were my thoughts and I agree with you. Even if people are scholars are not immune against bias even if they are scholars .But there is something that has bothering me lately. I’m having a severo crisis of faith and I have this question
Does God has perfection? When I mean perfection I mean atributes like Omnipotence, Omniscience, omnipresence, being all loving, Never making mistakes and the foundation of Logic and morality.
But does the bible support this? What about the conflictive passages? Can we give an actual answer without contradicting each other ( the bible and the attributes) ?
Thanks and God bless
Hi Joel I am a huge fan of ur blogs been reading it for over a year now and love ur posts discussing how to read Genesis 1-11 Roman’s Galatians and Ecclesiastes. I want to ask you a few questions, I hope you can answer them. Do you have a more narrative and story centric view of the Bible where u read it as one big epic but complex story? Do you also have recommendation on Bible commentaries or books about the Bible or books for how to read the Bible done by Bible scholars and theologians, I really want to deepen my understanding of the Bible and I already know NT wright and John Walton and is there others that can help me with this? Also have you heard of Bible project by Tim Mackie and Jon Collin’s I’m a huge fan of them and I’m curious have u heard about them or seen their videos and if so what’s ur opinion on them? I hope you can answer these questions I would really appreciate it.
Well, I certainly do think reading the Bible as narrative and literature (as well as history) are key things. My undergraduate degree is in literature, so I have always tried to read each book in the Bible as a literary whole. Wright and Walton are great. I think Michael Heiser’s “The Unseen Realm” is an eye-opening (I did a blog series on it a while back). I’ve heard of Mackie and Collins…I don’t really recall much about them though.
As for recommendations, I’ll just do a shameless plug. I have a “Blue-Collar Bible Scholar: Reader’s Guide” to both the OT and NT (the OT is in two volumes). You can get them on Amazon, and I believe I have ads for them here on my blog. Essentially, they represent my teaching of the Bible for about 20 years at both the high school and college level. My goal has always been to take what I learned at grad school/academic level and make it accessible and understandable for those who want to learn but aren’t going to get a PhD.
Joel I have a question I want to ask, it’s concerning the apocalyptic language in Paul letters like 1 Corinthians 7 about the time is near and something similar in Roman’s and 1 Thessalonians, did he thought the world is going to end soon or was this language more aligned with the destruction of the second temple and if Paul did believe that Christ will come in his life does that say something about the reliability of his message or is there underlying principles that works for all times? Another question is about the authorship of second Peter and hearing it’s not written by Peter and if it wasn’t does that mean it shouldn’t be in the NT but I heard that Richard Bauckman thinks it’s a genre in second temple Jewish literature known as testament genre or something like that and is this a very respected view?
It’s a complicated issue, but I personally believe that the early first century Church (Paul included), when they talked about Jesus’ “coming,” were referring to His vindication that would coincide with the Temple’s destruction. Start with the Olivet Discourse–After He tells His disciples that the Temple would be destroyed, they ask Him, “When will this happen? What will be the sign of your COMING and the consummation of the age?” (Matt 24). Later in the Olivet Discourse, when He is talking about the “Abomination of Desolation” and the destruction of the Temple, He tells that will coincide with the “coming” of the Son of Man.” But He also says (in Matthew 24:6) that though wars are inevitably going to happen (I think this is a reference to the conflicts of the Jewish War of AD 66-70), that the CONSUMMATION wouldn’t happen yet.
Basically, the disciples question shows they expected Jesus’ “coming” (linked with the destruction of the Temple) to basically be at the same time as the “consummation” of the age (think “end of the world”). Jesus clearly tells them that they will be around when His “coming” (destruction of the Temple) happens, but the “consummation” wouldn’t happen at that time. Most of the stuff in the Olivet Discourse is about Jesus prophesying the destruction of the Temple that would happen within a generation (which it did).
Given that, when I read in Paul talking (in the 50s) about Jesus’ “coming,” I think he, along with that first generation church, believed Jesus’ prophesy of the Temple’s destruction would happen within their lifetime. I think that was a key element within the original Gospel message: Jesus came to His own people, and because the Jewish priesthood rejected Him and got Rome to crucify Him, and because they continued to persecute Jesus’ followers, that eventually God’s wrath would fall on Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed, just as Jesus prophesied–and that would vindicate Him in the eyes of the world. His immediate followers witnessed that He had risen from the dead. How would the rest of the world be convinced Jesus was truly Lord and Savior? Well, His prophesy of the Temple’s destruction was fulfilled within a generation.
All that said, I think when Paul talks about Jesus’ “coming,” he was talking about the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophesy of the Temple’s destruction, not the end of the world. As Jesus told His disciples in the Olivet Discourse, the “end” (the “consummation”) would not happen when the Temple’s destruction/Coming of the Son of Man happened.