The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor

Foundations are vital. 

The upper structure is beautiful, sleek, modern, radiant with sunlight, affording splendid vistas. The guests mingle, cocktails in hand. Hidden speakers waft Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto in D minor from room to room. Fine art decorates the walls. A glistening Steinway concert grand piano accentuates the great room. From the deck, one smells the sweet salt of the Pacific, hears the rhythmic waves breaking, and gazes at majestic pelicans swooping, diving. An exquisite home.

A far distant marine earthquake awakens a rolling wave. The tsunami thunders to shore. Cliffs melt. Palms topple. The exquisite house was built on a cement slab. Its foundation is tidal sand. With all its art and beauty, it crashes into the sea, shatters, splinters, washes away all memory of its existence. Barons wail.

America. Beautiful, sophisticated, exquisite ideals. An ideal structure, second to none.

• “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” 
• “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 
• “A more perfect Union.” 
• “E Pluribus Unum” 
• “Novus Ordo Seclorum” 
• “That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” 
• “The land of the free and the home of the brave.” 
• “One Nation under God.” 
• “In God We Trust.” 
• “Liberty and Justice for All.” 
• “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” 
• “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” 
• “I Have a Dream.” 

Ideals pronounced over a land of soaring mountains, vast plains, misty valleys, thundering cataracts, colossal forests, rocky shores, and pristine beaches. America the beautiful. We want to believe that its ideals are its foundation. Or, are they but a cement slab of great ideas, idealistic visions, and inspirational political philosophy?

Under them lies conquest, genocide, chattel slavery, greed. Indigenous nations called the continent home for 15,000 years before Europeans looking for gold arrived with their papal mandate to convert and enslave. Britain confined its colonies east of the Alleghenies. The colonists would have none of that. From sea to shining sea, a new idealistic nation was built on stolen land.

That land with its farms, plantations, shops, and factories was worked by enslaved African human beings and their descendants. Stolen land. Stolen people.

America’s largest Protestant denomination was founded on the belief that people of African descent were designed by the creator to serve those of European descent. Rather than relinquish their slaves, enslavers shattered the fragile peace. Blood flowed in rivers. Those in active rebellion against the United States of America were defeated. Then came Jim Crow, mass incarceration, voter oppression, convict leasing, red-lining, and church-run private schools to ensure the continuation of subjection. Hard won civil rights are now relegated to yesteryear by all three branches of the federal government.

The American empire is built on sand. Its great room with its vistas, light, and music is still quite beautiful. Can its ideals be jacked up and a new, solid foundation built under it? It can, but doing so will begin with precisely what those presently in power will not consider – confession, repentance, reconciliation, reparations, and restorative justice. 

Some of us built our individual lives on sand. Some of us built lives on greed, pleasure, ego, entitlement, prestige, ambition, or aggression. Our gods are Mammon, Mars, and Aphrodite. We will not admit that, even to ourselves. We cover our motives with the personae of freedom, equality, liberty, one nation under God. Safe in our suburbs with our guns handy, we drink our illusions from silos of disinformation.

Some of us face the unpleasant truths, coming to realize we were influenced by a racialized culture. Painful as it is, we repent. We make amends. We purposely make friends of those who were once “other.” We support justice, goodness, equality. We still love the ideals that made the house exquisite. We eschew racism, misogyny, war, oppression, prejudice, violence, hatred – injustice at all levels. We do not hold guilt for things ancestors did decades and centuries ago. It’s not about guilt. It’s about justice. We cannot change the past, but we can turn from it and join with others to right wrongs as fully as possible.

If we as a people ignore the cement slab, blissful with our cocktails, vistas, art, music, and fine company, sooner or later, the rains will fall, the tsunami will crash, the floods will rise, and the American empire, like the great empires of old, will crash to dust.

Such is likely, but not inevitable. We can choose to face the underbelly of our history and set a course that will make the ideals of justice, liberty, honor, and righteousness our new and secure foundation. This beautiful home we call America can be jacked up and its cement slab replaced with a solid foundation. Today, we are on the precipice. 

Although our nation was founded on Enlightenment Age of Reason ideals articulated by deists, most of our founders, as well as most of us today, at least admire Jesus. Whether we identify as Christians or not, we esteem his compassion, wisdom, and ethics. Some argue that it is not government’s place to follow Jesus’ ethical teaching, but that that is rather reserved for individuals, faith communities, and denominations. Yet we are a government of, by, and for the people. The government is us. Our government is designed to represent us, to reflect our beliefs, to advance our ethics.

Enlightenment ideals and Christological ethics dovetail. Both promote multicultural equality and justice. Charity, fidelity, concern for the “other,” meeting the needs of those on the margins, open arms, and welcoming all with hospitality do not exhaust the teachings of the Jewish rabbi from Nazareth, but they are contained within his ethical worldview. Ignoring those ideals is malignant for any nation. To allow the whitewashing of history, along with injustice, ignorance, disinformation, censorship, oppression, jingoism, exploitation, war, xenophobia, state-sanctioned brutality, violence, prejudice, discrimination, grift, and avarice, to flourish untrammeled is metastatic. The tsunami is coming.

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.” (Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7:24–27, NLT.)