Harriet Tubman: A True Christian Hero

“The good and the great are only separated by the 

willingness to sacrifice.”   Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Remember the commercial, “What have you got in your wallet?” Okay, I’ll confess. The favorite face I like to have inside my wallet is Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately, he’s not there very often and leaves too quickly. When you hand him over at McDonald’s to be replaced by some of his lesser friends, the clerk will probably give you a look of disdain as she marks him up to make sure he’s for real.

  President Jackson is probably the most common face in my wallet. Having been raised in Atlanta, it’s rare for me to go anywhere without at least one Jackson tucked away. It’s called “mug money.” While I live in small town America where muggings are as common as traffic jams, old habits die hard. Add to that, I’m the only male in my family who’s never been mugged…I’d like to keep it that way.

  Too many of us tend to be resistant to change, especially if we’re conservative and the change smells like “political correctness” to us. Personally, I’m very pleased with the recent choice of Harriet Tubman to grace our $20 bills. I’d surmise many who are having such strong visceral reactions to this change don’t know much about either President Andrew Jackson or Harriet Tubman, other than he’s white and she’s black.

  In a day of growing political correctness and sensitivity, there could hardly be a more politically incorrect choice than Harriet Tubman. While she was a former slave, she could easily be the face for the NRA. She was known as the “Black Moses” because of the many slaves she rescued prior to the Civil War. Her rescue missions were very dangerous, so Tubman wisely demanded strict obedience from her escapees. A slave who returned to his master would likely be forced to reveal information which would compromise her mission. If a slave wanted to quit in the midst of a rescue, she’d hold a revolver to his head and ask him to reconsider. Asked whether she’d actually kill a reluctant escapee, she replied, “Yes, if he was weak enough to give out, he’d be weak enough to betray us all and all who had helped us, and do you think I'd let so many die just for one coward man?”

  While she never had to shoot a slave she helped, she did come close with one: “I told the boys to get their guns ready, and shoot him. They'd have done it in a minute; but when he heard that, he jumped right up and went on as well as anybody.”

  A foolish blunder today with our oversaturation of political correctness is the incessant judgment of yesterday’s choices by today’s standards. For example, do we think Harriet Tubman was right to threaten someone’s life? Personally, I can’t make that call. I’m just thankful she never had to make that choice. Yet, let’s not forget many innocent lives were at stake if her missions was discovered.

  The same is true of Andrew Jackson. One of the arguments made for this change is Jackson was a slave holder. But so was nearly everyone else. Do I believe he was correct or it can ever be rationalized? No, but I do believe there are things culturally accepted that even believers never evaluate in light of God’s Word because they’re so engrafted into the culture. Let me share just one example. Smoking today is a cultural taboo, yet not many years ago nearly everyone smoked, including many pastors like Spurgeon.

  As believers, we need to be biblically wise and cognizant that there are no good people, only a great God. We all have blind spots and chinks in our armor, often cultural ones. We must be cautious in judging others, particularly those from history. Yet, we often need to be better at judging ourselves and so thankful for God’s grace that He loves us in spite of our own spiritual blindness. It’s all of grace!

  Harriet Tubman was a Christian and a heroine. Raised in slavery in Maryland, she escaped in 1849. When she first reached the North, she said later, “I looked at my hands to see if I was de same person now I was free. Dere was such a glory ober eberything, de sun came like gold through de trees and ober de fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.” Yet, she was not satisfied with her own freedom and made 19 return trips to the South, helping to deliver at least 300 fellow slaves, boasting “I never lost a passenger.” Her friends and fellow abolitionists claimed the source of her strength came from her faith in God as deliverer and protector of the weak.

  “I always tole God,” she said, “I'm gwine to hole stiddy on you, an' you've got to see me through.” Incensed slave owners offered a $40,000 reward for her capture but she was never apprehended. “I can't die but once” became the motto of her life. With that philosophy she continued on with her mission of deliverance. For eight years, as America moved toward Civil War, she made many dangerous trips back to Maryland, leading slaves north to freedom. On each rescue mission she relied on God to guide and protect her. She gave all the credit to Him, explaining, “‘Twant me, ‘twas the Lord. I always told him, ‘I trusts to you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,’ and he always did.” No wonder she was known as Moses. Her faith deeply impressed others. Abolitionist Thomas Garrett said of her, “I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul.”

  Later, during the Civil War, she served the Union as a scout, spy, cook, and nurse to wounded and sick soldiers. She even led an armed assault on Southern plantations, during which 750 slaves were rescued. In later years, she donated property to be turned into a home for indigent former slaves.

  Harriet Tubman was someone we all can learn from and emulate. She lived out being salt and light before a wicked world. Today there is even more evil that needs resisting. Each time we see her face on our money, may it remind us, as those who’ve been rescued, we, too, have a mission to rescue slaves…slaves of sin. As we grow weary, let’s remember her unflinching courage and unfailing faith in God’s guidance—renewing our efforts to be a “Moses” to the ones God has called us to rescue.  

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You can't prune your family tree

“Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.”

             Tad Williams

  Poor Ben Affleck. Over the years he’s had a history of womanizing, as well as drug and gambling addictions. For the past decade he’s been married to Jennifer Garner and is the father of three children. Periodically, rumors surface that he’s still fighting his demons and they’re threatening his marriage. But in our politically correct world, it’s not his checkered past or current struggles that seem to bother him the most – it’s what his ancestors did – over two and a half centuries ago that make Ben blush.

  Recently, it came out that when Affleck participated in Henry Louis Gates’s PBS program Find Your Roots, and it was discovered — Gasp! — that Affleck’s roots include slave owners. According to an e-mail exchange between Gates and Sony CEO Michael Lynton, Affleck wanted to suppress this aspect of his family tree. The correspondence, found by the New York Daily News from the leaked Sony emails, shows Gates struggling to square the unprecedented request with his own editorial judgment. Gates wrote, “To do this would be a violation of PBS rules, actually, even for Batman.”

  In our Politically Correct world to have had slave owners in your family tree is something that you want cut down, burn up and ultimately seek to eradicate all of the evidence. It’s noteworthy in our distorted, upside down values world that Affleck’s personal history and issues don’t seem to bring nearly the embarrassment or motivation for a cover-up that something some ancestor he never knew did hundreds of years ago.

  As we read the pages of Scripture, we find that the Jews essentially took the same approach. They were very proud of their heritage and ancestors. After all, they were God’s chosen people. Somehow they mentally chose to cut down, burn up and eradicate from their collective memory all of the evidence of idolaters, adulterers, perverts, murderers, thieves, liars and basically any other sinful, debauched and criminal behavior from their family tree.

  This tendency to whitewash ourselves or our history is one of the reasons I’m cautious when I’m reading an autobiography or a biography written by a spouse or child. Because of the personal relationship or for their own reputation, candid honesty is often lost. Sometimes out of love, we don’t share or even choose to forget some of the dark facets of our family member’s life. Then, sometimes the opposite is true. A wounded family member exaggerates how bad a person was because they’re looking back through the eyes of their own personal pain.

  But that’s never the case with God’s Word. As we read the Bible, we find that while Scripture is never salacious, there is no expunging of the record or a cover-up. That’s because we all come from the same rotten family tree. It goes all the way back to the Garden and our first parents. That reminds us of some important truths.

  We all come from bad people, we are bad people and we have bad children. Like Ben Affleck, we often want to edit out skeletons in our family’s history. When it comes to our own shortcomings, the tendency is to gloss them over. When it comes to our children, we excuse and justify.

  But we’re not just bad by nurture, we’re bad by nature. Theologians call it “original sin.” Our ancestors, no matter how far or short of a distance from us, all had the same sin nature that we do. The evidence for it in our children is demonstrated as soon as they can exercise a personal will. A small child screaming that she wants a candy bar in the checkout line isn’t just tired or needs a nap, he’s willful and wants his way.

  Our crimes against God then are not circumstantial or environmental. We do what is wrong because it’s our nature. Even placing us back in Eden wouldn’t change that. That’s why giving people better housing, education, health care or even jobs will never bring about long term behavioral change. The wrong doing may become more educated and even “white collar” rather than gangsta style, but it will still be there. We have a heart problem, not an environmental one.  

  Evil is evil in the sight of God. Even in the Church, we like to categorize sin as big and little. Let me share just three examples.

  Alcohol/drug addiction are considered big sins among Christians, somehow though being a materialist/consumer is socially acceptable and even envied. Some believers are addicted to spending and buying – a newer house, car, furniture, clothes, gadgets, vacations, etc. There is no concept of stewardship or honoring the Lord with the finances He’s entrusted to them. They’re as addicted to spending and consuming as a heroin addict is to heroin. Don’t believe me? Challenge them to NOT spend except for necessities for the next three months. They’ll go into withdrawals.

  We would never use obscene language, somehow though complaining and criticizing is given a pass. How many of us, even as Christians who have so much to be thankful for, thank God or others? Not only do we fail to praise the God who gave it to us, we fail to thank the instruments He used like our family, friends or even brothers and sisters in our church family. So when was the last time you affirmed or encouraged someone compared to how many times you criticized or complained? To be candid, obscene language hurts the Kingdom much less than complaining or criticizing.  

  Smoking is horrible, anger just comes naturally. Smoking is not only a big sin in the church, our culture has made it one and even taxes it. Yet, holding something on fire between your lips does less damage than letting loose a volley of fire from your tongue. Christians who’d never consider smoking often have a smoking hot temper. Those closest to them are seared by their explosions, tiptoeing around them much as they would walking through a minefield.

  The bottom line of all this is that there’s not enough dirt in this world to bury all of our sinful skeletons. We’re not good or nice people. In God’s sight, sin is sin, whether it’s adultery or anger. Instead of trying to bury what can’t be buried, we need to celebrate God’s grace who in His mercy and grace paid for all our sin with His own Son’s life and pulled us out of the pit, “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug” (Isaiah 51:1). And we need to share with others who hopelessly attempt to bury their skeletons and clean up the sinful corpse of their life, the true hope that only God’s grace can bring.

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