This week we celebrate Independence Day. On June 19th, we celebrated Juneteenth Day. I had not heard of Juneteenth a few years ago; it’s only when it became a national holiday that this commemoration came to my notice.
The juxtaposition of these two holidays is significant. On July 4, we remember that our founding fathers declared that, that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. These noble sentiments were based on European Enlightenment principles which were themselves based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Juneteenth Day tempers our enthusiasm about the Declaration of Independence, noble as it was, since on July 4, 1776, people were not equal in the United States. As the Declaration proclaimed its mighty words, millions of human beings were regarded as property, without freedom, with no right to the law’s protection when they were abused. On June 19, 1865, enslaved people in Texas learned that the government of the United States had regarded them as free for the past two years. But they hadn’t heard until Union soldiers announced the good news of liberty.
The words of the Declaration of Independence may seem hollow since they were endorsed in a country where slavery was legal and where some of the signers actually enslaved human beings. However, it seems to me that we ought not to scoff at good ideals just because the proponents of those ideals themselves don’t follow their own words fully.
Saint Augustine in his classic book, City of God, established the fundamental principal of Christian political philosophy, that there never was in history a golden age and there never will be in the future a golden time. Augustine says, however, that this is not an excuse for not trying to create a just society. In fact, as Christians we have a duty to work for the good of all. But Augustine says that we will always fall short.
Today there is a tendency to condemn the past because it was not fully just. It is important to admit the injustice that was part of our past. There is also a tendency today to believe that we can achieve perfect justice in the future. While working for this ideal, we must admit that we will fall short and that perfect justice is achieved only in heaven.
Which leads us to Christ. Saint Paul told the early Christians that “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. In the first century, the Roman Empire was rife with slavery. It was everywhere. Paul insists that the most abused slave had equal dignity with free persons in Christ. He also insisted that Jews and Gentiles were equal in the sight of God. These were shocking words in that time!
We can’t be confident that progress is linear, that future ages will be better than the past. Liberty and equality require eternal vigilance and effort. Genesis tells us that every human being is created in the “image and likeness of God” and thus has infinite value. The poor, the addicted, the criminal, unborn children, people of every race and social class—all have dignity, equal dignity, in the eyes of God and it is blasphemy to disrespect the image of God in any person.
As we celebrate our national holidays, let us be proud of our past and at the same time be humble about our personal and national shortcomings and sins. And let us commit ourselves to the biblical vision of humanity, in which each person without exception is endowed with inalienable rights and dignity. Our founders spoke truth, even if they did not always live the truth they uttered. Let’s commit ourselves to fulfilling their vision.
