I was leafing through the latest American Heritage magazine the other day and noticed an advertisement by the department of tourism in my home state, West Virginia, announcing a series of events celebrating the 150th anniversary of John Brown’s raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. Their logo, which features a photograph of John Brown looking more like a 19th century German composer than a wild-eyed terrorist, asked me to visit johnbrownraid.org for more information. So I did. I wanted to see how John Brown was presented. When I last visited the sight, more than 25 years ago, John Brown was presented, by the kind and knowledgeable people of the Park Service, as a looser-turned wild eyed terrorist. I had heard from some folks who have visited more recently that his resume and reputation have since been given a make-over. The sight admits that he was, and is “a polarizing figure,” and seeks to “present the facts” and let visitors “decide for themselves.” However, the series of events are called a “Celebration,” and the whole tone of the sight, and its assessment of the man is celebratory.
I wonder how hard they had to look to find a photograph of Brown that didn’t make him look like Charles Manson’s less stable, wing-nut uncle. The two most famous images of him are John Steuart Curry’s 1939 painting presenting him as an Old Testament Prophet gone terribly wrong, and the 1846 Augustus Washington daguerreotype. Some used to believe that a photograph captured part of your soul. Maybe those folks saw this picture, because that sitting in 1846 gives us a clear and chilling image of a man who lost 18 of his 20 children to violent or premature death, or to insane asylums – a man who took bankruptcy 5 times in four states – a man who murdered children.
In 1856 John Brown and three of his sons were conducting raids in Kansas against the pro-slavery terrorist group, the Border Ruffians. On May 23, they surprised the leader of the Border Ruffians, James Doyle, at his home in Pottawatomie, Kansas. They hauled the extended family out into the night. Holding James Doyle at gunpoint, Brown ordered his men to cut off the arms of all the males, and split their heads open with broadswords. The youngest was six years old. When Doyle had this witnessed the slaughter of his family, John Brown put a bullet in his head. Now class, make up your own minds about this “polarizing” figure.
Because John Brown had a put together quite a body of terrorist activity in the cause of abolition, other, more peace-loving abolitionists celebrated him. Emerson, Beecher, Melville, Whitman – even Victor Hugo celebrated him as a Christ-figure. Others disagreed. Lincoln, Fredrick Douglass, and William Lloyd Garrison, rejected him outright as a thug and a lunatic.
John Brown thought he was doing God’s work, because slavery, as practiced in the United States, was sinful. You may agree with his assessment of slavery, but hopefully, with 20/20 hindsight, we can all agree that he was not doing God’s, or the Nation’s work. I mention this because any time we start to feel righteous indignation, or even something as petty as right-ness indignation, we start to have a high tolerance level for the bully who agrees with us. Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor always has a ready, real-life counterpart: John Brown, Colonel Smutz, Bull Connor.
Being right about something is not enough. We have to be right in the right way or we are not right at all. Whatever the lines were in Rome concerning the eating of meat, Paul knows what principle is right. He says it clearly in Romans 14:14: Nothing is unclean of itself. He says he absolutely knows this, is convinced of it in Jesus Christ. Therefore, if folks don’t agree he’ll have to knock a few heads around – right? Wrong.
He says: Let us pursue the things that make for peace and the building up of one another (Romans 19), do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food (Romans.20). We may think that eating meat is a minor issue (it wasn’t to them), but Peter, in speaking of our defense of the Gospel itself says that our answers must be given “with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15).
Rightness is not license. A bully is a bully whether I agree with him or not. Jesus was never a bully. Nor should we ever be. And we should never celebrate, condone, or enable a bully. Ever.
