{"id":1688,"date":"2022-06-01T08:40:19","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T12:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1688"},"modified":"2022-06-01T08:40:19","modified_gmt":"2022-06-01T12:40:19","slug":"taking-sides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/01\/taking-sides\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Sides"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln stood against the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol and presented his Second Inaugural Address.
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Less than five weeks later, the core goals of his presidency \u2013 the surrender of the primary Confederate forces and thus the preservation of the Union \u2013 would finally be accomplished.\u00a0 The expectation of those victories buoyed the nation\u2019s capital.\u00a0 \u00a0
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If the assembled crowd thought that Lincoln might use this opportunity to gloat, rejoice, or rally his supporters, they didn\u2019t know the president.\u00a0
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His speech was short \u2013 a mere 701 words, most of them just one syllable.\u00a0 It took only six or seven minutes to deliver.\u00a0 Yet somehow in that short time Lincoln managed to utter some of the most eloquent and memorable phrases in the history of American rhetoric.\u00a0 Frederick Douglass, the former slave and civil rights activist who stood in the crowd, later declared that the speech sounded more like a sermon than a political statement.\u00a0
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Instead of summoning his listeners to carry out righteous payback against the Rebels, he called for compassion and reconciliation.\u00a0 As Ronald C. White points out in his book Lincoln\u2019s Greatest<\/em> Speech<\/em>, the president even daringly suggested that both North and South shared the burden of guilt in bringing about the catastrophe of the Civil War.\u00a0
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Concerning those who had squared off during the previous four years, Lincoln said, \u201cBoth read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other\u2026 The prayers of both could not be answered \u2013 that of neither has been answered fully.\u201d\u00a0
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No one knows how many combatants died during the Civil War.\u00a0 For about a century, the most generally accepted number was 620,000.\u00a0 But recent historical research suggests that as many as 750,000 young men never returned from the battlefield.\u00a0
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After each engagement, volunteers undertook the heartbreaking task of going through the pockets of the fallen.\u00a0 The bodies needed to be identified before burial, and their personal possessions gathered so their families might collect them later.\u00a0 Typically there were diaries, letters, photographs, pocket watches, jewelry, and various keepsakes.
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But far and away what showed up most often in the pockets and backpacks of the dead were Bibles.\u00a0
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There were hundreds of thousands of them.\u00a0 The American Bible Society had produced small copies of the New Testament, as White puts it, \u201calmost as quickly as bullets.\u201d \u00a0The ABS had decided to make them available to Union and Confederate soldiers alike.\u00a0 From North to South, the words of Scripture had long been foundational for daily American life.\u00a0 Those who fought in the Civil War were without question the most religious soldiers in our nation\u2019s history. \u00a0
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Thus, as Lincoln observed, it wasn\u2019t as if one side trusted God and the other did not.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t Bible Believers vs. Bible Deniers.\u00a0 \u201cBoth read the same Bible and pray to the same God\u2026\u201d<\/em>
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And that generated a sort of spiritual crisis.\u00a0 Was it really possible to say, \u201cThese are the Good Guys and these are the Villains?\u201d\u00a0

The Old Testament book of Joshua reports a fascinating and often overlooked incident.\u00a0 Shortly before the armies of Israel come against the city of Jericho \u2013 the very first battle in which the Hebrews begin to claim the land God had originally promised to Abraham \u2013 Joshua, their commander, \u201csaw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand.\u00a0 Joshua went up to him and asked, \u2018Are you for us or for our enemies?\u2019\u201d \u00a0(Joshua 5:13)
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This is one of the oldest questions in history. \u00a0Are you for us or against us?\u00a0 Are you on our side (which is God\u2019s side) or have you made the cataclysmic mistake of\u00a0 aligning yourself with \u201cthose people\u201d?\u00a0
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Joshua doesn\u2019t seem to know who he\u2019s talking to.
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The man with the sword replies, \u201cNeither.\u00a0 But as the commander of the army of the Lord, I have now come.\u201d
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There\u2019s no other text in Scripture quite like this.\u00a0 It would seem the people of Israel have every reason to believe God is \u201ctheir\u201d God, and therefore on official retainer.\u00a0 Surely he\u2019s in Israel\u2019s pocket.\u00a0 But when the commander of the angelic army is asked, \u201cAre you on our side or their side?\u201d he answers with that one amazing word:\u00a0 Neither<\/em>.\u00a0
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God is not on our side and he\u2019s not on our enemy\u2019s side.\u00a0 God is on God\u2019s side<\/em>.\u00a0 And we had better do everything we can, with utter humility, to make sure everything we think and do and say is aligned with God\u2019s deepest wishes.
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Joshua doesn\u2019t need a second hint.\u00a0 \u201cThen Joshua fell face down to the ground in reverence, and asked him, \u2018What message does my Lord have for his servant?\u2019\u201d Israel\u2019s leader is saying, \u201cThis is your show, Lord, and not ours.\u00a0 I’m standing by for further orders.\u201d\u00a0
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Abraham Lincoln did not flinch at claiming that the cause of the Union was just.\u00a0 Slavery was an unmitigated evil and needed to be destroyed.\u00a0 But he wisely and humbly recognized that God, for his own reasons, had allowed the war to take place \u2013 and to be more dreadful than anyone could have anticipated.\u00a0 And at every step along the way, there were people counting on God in both blue and gray uniforms.\u00a0
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Instead of trying to make sense of such a deep mystery \u2013 and to say something like, \u201cI know exactly why God has allowed all this\u201d \u2013 he declared instead, \u201cThe Almighty has His own purposes.\u201d\u00a0
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Indeed, he does.\u00a0
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One of the most painful aspects of America\u2019s culture wars of the past 40 years is that brothers and sisters in Christ, even in the same church, have come to believe there are two sides: The Other Side (held only by deluded and sinful people) and Our Side (which is unquestionably God\u2019s Side).\u00a0 Both sides read the same Bible.\u00a0 Both sides quote Jesus.\u00a0 Both sides feel certain that God will vindicate their cause.\u00a0
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Instead of fighting our own civil war in God\u2019s name, may God give us the grace to remember that we have just two jobs today.
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We are to love God and love each other<\/em>.\u00a0
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And always, in the end, to run to the shelter of God\u2019s side.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln stood against the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol and presented his Second Inaugural Address.\u00a0Less than five weeks later, the core goals of his presidency \u2013 the surrender of the primary Confederate forces and thus the preservation of the Union \u2013 would finally be accomplished.\u00a0 The expectation of those victories buoyed the nation\u2019s capital.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0If… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[448,179],"class_list":["post-1688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bible-reading","tag-prayer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1690,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions\/1690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}