untitled thoughts

Remembering a story I wrote when I was younger, about a gang of former Union soldiers who raped and looted farms in the South after the Civil War was functionally over, and were fully justified by their Northern peers in doing so... and the likes of whom were also painted in a very forgiving light (which I, apparently, wasn’t fooled by) in the Christian history book in which I learned about them.

Remembering ‘Johnny Tremain’ and reading about him being the hero of the book for disorderly behavior and law-breaking in the cause of ‘liberty’, then reading another book about a young Black boy being matter-of-factly lynched for mere suspicion of theft. 

Remembering a Christian romance novel (?!) centered around a Native American woman who was kidnapped, abused, and violated in the name of Christ and then having a magic, absurd transformation into a model minority who against all odds accepted the same Jesus who’s name was so vilely used to deface her heritage and disregard her dignity.

I wasn’t more than 13 years old. And I already knew that stuff like this looms large in our country’s history. I already was beginning to recognize the double standards and the duplicity of our popular historical narrative. That’s just three examples of violence and abuse being excused and normalized in that historical narrative because of which ‘side’ it was perpetrated by, and I had them figured out before I even was in high-school. 

This isn’t me trying to sound extraordinarily smart or aware- I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. I am saying that there isn’t an excuse, especially as adults, for ignoring and whitewashing the facts about how dark and bloody so much of American history really is, and what has formed the reality we live in NOW. 

How can we repent of that which we collectively won’t even name? How can we move forward on a foundation we don’t even acknowledge? How can we expect to be blessed for such chosen blindness and continued disregard for the whole scope of God’s righteousness? How can we tack the label Christian onto a culture so shrouded in falsehood?