All understanding is relative.
Any adult who does not understand this simple truth has not been paying attention to the way life works. But, then, many of us go through life with our minds closed and our eyes firmly shut.
To these folks, my understanding of life is the only possible, the only acceptable understanding. And it probably should be enforced onto anyone who disagrees with me.
It remains the case that, even in today’s America, race, class, education, political, and economic opportunities all play a sizeable role in determining how people evaluate their lives, set their priorities, and consider their circumstances.
Frederick Douglass was an American statesman, abolitionist, author, orator, and an escaped slave. In 1852, Mr. Douglass was asked to give a speech about the significance of the American Day of Independence, July 4th.
As a former slave fighting in the front lines against the institution of American slavery, his perspective on Independence Day celebrations was very different from that of the average, well-off, white person.
Then, as today, race and class matter. They matter greatly. They make all the difference in how a person understands life, and what events appear worthy of celebration.
As I argue regularly on this blog, similarly stark differences in perspective ought to be heard in Christian evaluations of this secular holiday, the 4th of July.
The fact that the average American Christian typically applauds in the front row of this annual standing ovation for American “freedom,” brazenness, and over consumption is additional testimony to our cultural captivity, not to mention our spiritual blindness.
Listen to what Mr. Douglass said:
You can read the complete text of Douglass’s powerful speech here.
Although Douglass’s entire speech is brilliant, for me, the special genius of Douglass’s wonderful oratory is on fullest display in the following excerpt. (The emphasis is mine):
. . . What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour…
