July 4, 1826
I have a new book coming out in October. It’s called Love Goes First: Reaching Others in an Age of Anxiety and Division. The book is about how we can actually move forward and reach the people who disagree with us, even the people who hate us.
(Please pre-order! Here’s the Amazon pre-order page, though you can pre-order at any bookseller you prefer. Every single pre-order sale will help get the message of the book out, because pre-order sales tell booksellers if a book is worth pushing and investing in.)
One of the things I do in the book is include lots of examples that illustrate what it means to go first, including one about July 4, 1826. So, here on the Fourth of July, allow me to share with you a few pages from my book.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826. Jefferson died at Monticello, his Virginia home, at around one o’clock in the afternoon. He was eighty-three years old. That same afternoon, Adams lay on his own deathbed, surrounded by loved ones: “Adams lay peacefully, his mind clear, by all signs. Then late in the afternoon, according to several who were present in the room, he stirred and whispered clearly enough to be understood, ‘Thomas Jefferson survives.’”
Then a few hours later, at about six-twenty in the evening, John Adams died. He was ninety years old. Both men had lived to see the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and each man died believing the other still survived. The fact that they both died on the same day is amazing. The fact that they died as friends is a miracle.
Both Adams and Jefferson were relatively young men when they were tasked by the Continental Congress with the writing of the document that would enumerate the reasons the thirteen colonies were declaring their independence from King George—when the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, Adams was forty and Jefferson only thirty-three. Although their signatures on the document prove that they were united in spirit and purpose at that point in their lives, as their long and distinguished careers played out, they became bitter enemies and had no contact with each other for years. Both served as president of the United States, but in rival parties, with Jefferson succeeding Adams to the office—two of the great men of the American Revolution implacably estranged from each other.
Their mutual friend—and signer of the Declaration from Pennsylvania—Dr. Benjamin Rush was grieved at the enmity between Adams and Jefferson and tried for several years to get them to reconcile. Then, in December 1811,
just before Christmas, Adams heard again from Benjamin Rush who wished to remind him of a visit Adams had had the summer before from two young men from Virginia. They were brothers named Coles, Albemarle County neighbors of Jefferson’s, and in the course of conversation Adams had at length exclaimed, “I have always loved Jefferson and I still love him.” This had been carried back to Monticello, and was all Jefferson needed to hear. To Rush he wrote, “I only needed this knowledge to revive toward him all the affections of the most cordial moments of our lives.” “And now, my dear friend,” declared Rush to Adams, “permit me again to suggest to you to receive the olive branch offered to you by the hand of a man who still loves you.”
On New Year’s Day 1812, seated at his desk in the second- floor library, Adams took up his pen to write a short letter to Jefferson. . . .
The brief letter from Adams immediately produced a response in Jefferson:
If, as stage-managed by Rush, it had been left to Adams to make the first move, Jefferson more than fulfilled his part. “A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind,” he continued. “It carried me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right of self-government.”
In the fourteen years that followed their dramatic reconciliation, both men exchanged dozens and dozens of letters on every possible topic. Though they were both old men in those years, they recalled and relived the months and moments of that bright time in their lives, decades before, when they were part of the great events of the American Revolution. Their letters are a precious gift to posterity and part of the inheritance of all subsequent Americans.
They are also a testament to the life-changing power of forgiveness and the catalyzing potential of going first. What if, resisting Dr. Rush’s prodding, Adams had refused to send his initial letter to Jefferson? What if Jefferson, nursing decades-old grievances, had refused to reply? I find it fascinating—though not at all surprising—that these great men of American history just needed someone to go first to turn them back toward each other and move them toward reconciliation. They each wanted to be liked by the other. For Jefferson, what moved him was the repetition in his presence of a chance favorable remark Adams had uttered to someone else; for Adams, it was the knowledge that Jefferson still loved him and had said so in a letter to Rush. The whole story is beautiful—a little jewel of American history.
Happy Fourth, everyone.
Note: the block quotations above are from David McCullough’s biography of John Adams.
A Prayer For Our Nation
[Photo taken by yours truly, Sunday evening, July 3, 2022. Colington Island, North Carolina.]
For Our Nation
Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage: We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure conduct. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom, in thy Name, we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
—from The Book of Common Prayer
Happy Independence Day, everyone.
If Today Were the Last Day of Your Life
If today were the last day of your life
you wouldn’t spend it fretting in anxiety about an election outcome over which you have no control;
you wouldn’t foment a sense of outrage at people who have the wrong facts, opinions, and ideas;
you wouldn’t frantically refresh your newsfeeds to see what’s changed in the last 4 minutes.
If today were the last day of your life
you’d savor every sip of your coffee;
you’d smile at the sight of every human face, considering it a great privilege just to be in that person’s presence;
and
you’d be grateful to God for every breath you had left.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
Happy Halloween
It's Halloween, and even though the weatherman is calling for rain, the "soldier" in our house is planning on braving the elements and trick-or-treating tonight (though he is worried that his Nerf darts will get wet). Mrs. F. and I are raising our kids to be faithful young people, which raises the question: Do I as a pastor see a problem with our kids' participating in Halloween? The short answer is, "No." Some further thoughts below.I was my son's age 30 years ago, and I've been thinking about the differences between his experience of trick-or-treating and mine. I think there is a lot about America that we can learn from Halloween, and sadly, most of the changes that have taken place these past 30 years have been for the worse.As in so many areas of childhood, most of the fun of Halloween was in the expectation: what would I be, and how much loot could I get from my neighbors' largesse? As soon as the calendar turned to October, I'd begin thinking about my costume. When I was a kid, I seem to remember that most kids made their costumes, not bought them from the store. Making your costume was part of the fun. There is no question that Halloween has become much more manufactured and commercialized over the past 30 years. As in many other areas of American life, our obsessive desire to express ourselves as individuals has meant that we have become more like everyone else: everyone just wears the same mass-produced junk made in China. (What do these millions of Chinese people toiling in factories think about us? How stupid and frivolous must they think we are.)There was an unwritten rule in my neighborhood that teenagers were too old to trick-or-treat: Halloween was supposed to be for elementary age children and younger. These days, Halloween seems to be more and more about adults, and this is a change I don't welcome. I remember last year walking with my children up to some houses and feeling really uncomfortable: many of the adult costumes seemed to be as sexualized and violent as possible.I think that's another change I have sadly noticed: for me, trick-or-treating was mainly about kids running around the neighborhood in the twilight, and that was certainly the large part of the fun: you were?by yourself, with no parents!? But today, like most American parents of our class and background, the idea of letting our kids roam free in the dark in our community seems crazy to me and my wife. Maybe American life is more dangerous now than it was 30 years ago, but I liked it better when parents felt fine letting their kids roam by themselves.Don't get me wrong: not all the changes have been for the worse. For example, these days the candy has definitely gotten better. My brothers and I would eat a heaping pile of candy when we got home from trick-or-treating--against our mom's protestations--and then store the rest in those round Christmas cookie tins, which we kept under our beds. For the next few days, our school lunches would have much more sugar than usual, but after that the same thing would happen every year:?we'd eat all the good stuff that first week of November, only to dig out the cans from under our beds months later and find within them forlorn Charleston Chews and Tootie Rolls and other worse candies (if that's possible) that weren't even dignified enough to have been given names. What I would have given for a full-size Milky Way bar!I know folks who object to Halloween on the grounds that the day celebrates evil and the occult. Though I certainly understand their concerns, I personally don't have any problem with the silly and fun aspects of trick-or-treating and dressing up. For me, this is a 1 Corinthians 8 issue: I don't find any problem per se with my children participating in the silly aspects of Halloween, though if other Christians have concluded otherwise for their families, I certainly support them and understand that point of view. And, though Halloween is crassly commercial, frankly in my household it seems to be much less damaging than just basic tv and internet consumption anyway. So, in our family we have fun trick-or-treating, and Halloween is not something I find to be spiritually and morally dangerous for my children.Which is not to say there aren't elements of Halloween that I do in fact find spiritually and morally dangerous.There's that scene in the movie?Mean Girls where the protagonist, who has grown up in Africa, finds herself in her first high school Halloween party back in America, and is shocked to see how all the other girls have used the occasion to dress up in as slutty and provocative a way as possible. Here's what she says:
In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.
I think the scene is (unintentionally) instructive: we have come to accept the sexualization of everything as normal, and what we have come to accept as normal is shocking and strange to people who haven't been indoctrinated in Western culture. We are obsessed with sex, and even though the miserable results of this obsession are all around us, we persist in worshipping at Aphrodite's temple. The same is true for the way we deliberately embrace evil on Halloween. I was listening to The Ticket this morning as I drove home from working out; Gordo and Junior were talking about serial killers and prison beatings, etc., and so I turned off the radio--I don't want to fill my mind with evil. Because, let's be clear: dismemberment and murder and the like are evil actions. I'll go further--they are manifestations of the demonic. Do those things occur? Of course--this is a fallen world--but they don't need to be celebrated.I think it is spiritually foolish and morally problematic to celebrate evil and violence in costume and decoration, much less to investigate the occult. We should flee from such things, and not deliberately welcome them into our homes.So, I understand why some people strongly dislike Halloween. There will be some houses tonight which we will quickly walk past and avoid. My children are only children once, and they will encounter the violence and sexualization of our world soon enough. When they do, I want them to be discerning enough to discriminate between harmless fun and harmful evil, and Halloween can be a way for them to learn how to do so.So, tonight, I look forward to taking my kids out in the rain and letting them eat way more sugar than is good for them, to welcome the coming change of season and enjoy something fun about being an American child. And then, I hope to teach them one last Halloween lesson: how to discern good candy from Tootsie Rolls.Happy Halloween.