The Force of Wilber

I have been reading “Amazing Grace” this week.  It is the extraordinary true story of British member of Parliament William Wilberforce who led his nation to abolish slavery.  It is remarkable that this one man, by the sheer force of his faith changed his entire country’s view of what morality, what righteousness, truly means.
Most people know the story of the Hymn “Amazing Grace”.  British slave ship captain John Newton watches as his ship is crushed against the rocks off Hatteras during a hurricane.  He is convinced he will die, drowning in the churning waters of the Atlantic.  His life, he realizes, has been a complete mess.  He calls out to God.  And God hears and delivers this loathsome retch.  The song doesn’t immediately come.  Newton has to figure out what “it” all means.  Why did he survive?  He comes to understand how broken he truly is, but even broken he is not beyond God’s amazing life altering grace.

William Wilberforce as a young boy met the “saved” John Newton and through that friendship would use his faith to lead the British people in a new direction.  As author Eric Metaxas notes: 

“Americans have an outsized tendency to romanticize the past…life in eighteenth-century Britain was particularly brutal, decadent, violent and vulgar.  Slavery was only the worst of a host of societal evils that included epidemic alcoholism, child prostitution, child labor, frequent public executions for petty crimes, public dissections and burnings of executed criminals and unspeakable public cruelty to animals.”

English society during Newton’s and Wilberforce’s days was, simply put, immoral.  But before we get too comfortable thinking “that’s not us,” consider the following from the author commenting on how the British allowed such social immorality and evil to exist in their society.

“Just as most Americans today have never visited a slaughterhouse to investigate the grim details of how large animals become the shrink-wrapped frankfurters in their supermarkets, nor have witnessed the degradation and violence of life among the two million people incarcerated in our prisons, so most Britons went about their lives with no idea of the universe of horrors that existed….”

William Wilberforce believed God intended people to live in a different way than in the brutality of life he saw in British society.  And, it wasn’t just words with him.  He was a wealthy, carefree young man who suddenly had an epiphany, a life altering moment.  He was never the same.  He began living frugally, donating his wealth to the less fortunate.  And, he spearheaded abolition.

By the force of his faith Britain went from a degrading, course, violent society to one where decency became common place.  It didn’t happen overnight and it wasn’t easy.  Wilberforce had to fight the conventional wisdom of his day, particularly the Church of England which, the author notes, “was little more than a pseudo-Christian purveyor of government sponsored institutionalized hypocrisy.”

No one today would even attempt to argue that slavery is somehow justified.  Yet, before we get smug about how far we’ve advanced, consider the current state of our society.  How much different are we really from eighteenth century Britain?

The United States incarcerates more people in sheer number and per capita, than any other country in the world.  All those despots, all those tyrants together couldn’t come up with two million people in prison.  Even China, with one billion plus citizens does not have two million incarcerated people.

And, the prisons are abysmal.  They are filthy, violent, degrading places.  They are filled with many people suffering from mental illness and substance abuse problems.  The American prison system is deplorable, immoral and without any redeeming social value.

We, as a nation, pride ourselves on our national morality.  Many people often claim we are a “Christian” nation.  Well to be Christian implies we are “Christ like”.  I have repeatedly posed the question in this blog “What would Jesus do/say?”  Would Jesus have raised an American flag and shouted “USA” when he heard that OBL was shot?  I don’t think so.  Nor do I think Jesus would look at the current sate of America’s prison system (I refuse to use the Orwellian term “corrections”) and say “you’ve got it right America.”  Somehow I think He would tell us to love, forgive and show mercy; three things that are in terribly short supply in this nation, in this world, in each of us.  Like the example He set with the adulterous woman, He would tell us to build a corrections system that measures the remorse and regret of the wrongdoer and “corrects” by knowing we are all wrongdoers.  We all deserve a second chance.

“Anonymous in Alaska” took me to task for comparing POW’s to inmates.  “POW’s were fighting for our freedom”, she wrote.  “Alaska”, criminality is in the eye of the injured.  Ask a German family their feelings as they sat in Dresden in 1944 as the entire city was incinerated by U.S. firebombing at a loss of civilian life in excess of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  There was no military objective in that attack.

Ask the 100,000 Iraqi dead, “collateral damage”, in our “liberation” of Iraq if they think this country’s behavior was justified?  How about the Vietnamese women and children butchered at Mylar or just napalmed during a bombing run?  What reaction would you get from Native Americans to the massacre at Wounded Knee?  Read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.  Read Grisham’s The Confession.

What “Alaska” missed – what Newton and Wilberforce came to understand – is that we turn a blind eye to the evil and injustice that permeates our lives.  We hold ourselves out with self righteous pride about our goodness because we live our lives in a state of relative morality.  How else can a guy like me explain away being such a liar to the woman I love and took an oath before God to love, honor and cherish?  In relative terms, I was a pretty good husband, pretty good guy.  In truth – in the absolute truth of God’s judgment – I am a filthy, despicable sinful retch.

The amazing thing about that is God doesn’t give up on me or anyone else.  He calls us to live as He intends us to live; showing mercy, compassion, forgiveness and love.

That’s the epiphany John Newton had on that sinking slave ship.  That was the driving force behind Wilberforce’s campaign.  That is why I rail against prisons and pray each day for my ex’s happiness.  We all can do better.  Morality is not relative, and neither is grace.