The Great American Guilt Trip
Copyright © 2010 James L. Melton
Preached August 15, 2010, Bible Baptist Church, Martin, TN
“And when Joseph’s brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.” (Gen. 50:15-21)
It was assumed that Joseph would seek revenge on his brethren that had betrayed him, but Joseph surprised everyone by taking the high road, as they say, by seeing God’s hand in the big picture. To acknowledge God’s working in the whole thing and still seek revenge would have been a contradiction, so he chose to view their transgression as a small thing in light of the greater blessing that God had worked out. From his point of view, the main thing wasn’t the transgression; it was God’s marvelous way of saving much people alive. Others could ramble on about the transgression, if they chose, but Joseph chose rather to dwell on the blessings of God (which is probably why he was made the second ruler in Egypt while his brethren worried about food in Caanan).
There’s a great verse in Job that deals with this very thing. Job 24:1 says, “Why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty, do they that know him not see his days?” (Job 24:1) In other words, Job is asking, “Why don’t God’s people know what God is doing?” It’s understandable that the wicked would remain in darkness, but why are God’s people so blind to God’s workings? Why do so many of us view things exactly as the world views them?
Asaph’s words in Psalm 73 are also very good. This dear saint had gotten his eyes off the Lord and on the wicked. Consequently, things just weren’t making much sense, just didn’t seem right. Then in verses 16-19 he said, “When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors.” He got eyes back on the Lord and was no longer worried about the wicked. One might say that he had “bigger fish to fry.”
That was the case with Joseph and Asaph, and it should be the case with you and I today. We ought to have enough spiritual discernment to see the hand of God working in our midst. We ought to see it in our personal lives, in our families, in our churches, in our country, and in the world. Just as importantly, we ought to be able to see God’s hand working all throughout history. After all, history is HIS Story.
I want to take a look today at three things in American history that are looked at by millions of people only through a negative, narrow, and temporal lens. Consequently, such people can’t see the big picture, and they can’t see the hand of God. All they can see is the fact that America has been very sinful in her past and deserves to be criticized endlessly so that we can live with a deep sense of guilt and give our support to whatever socialist agenda might be offered for the purpose of atoning for our past sins. God’s people ought to be wiser than that and not fall prey to such simple-minded reasoning. In other words, before you get hung up on some past national sin and climb on the “blame America” wagon, you might want to consider the possibility that “God meant it unto good” (Gen. 50:20).
I. AMERICA’S TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS
We are often reminded of how the white Europeans came here and stole the North American continent from the natives that were already here. I can remember a television commercial from my childhood which showed an old Indian shedding a tear over the fact that the white man had polluted this land by throwing trash out on the highways and in the streams. They didn’t bother to tell you that the Indians had been polluting this land for centuries with their idolatry and pagan customs.
That stuff is for temporal-minded suckers who can’t think the way God thinks, in spiritual and in eternal terms. The Bible is very clear about the fact that when God considers a people to be unworthy of the land they occupy, He reserves the right to kick them out of it and then move a better people into it. That might not be politically correct, but it’s certainly Biblically correct, and it’s a major factor in determining who is blessed in a land and who isn’t.
Leviticus 18:24-25 says, “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.” One of the reasons that God gave the land of Canaan to the Israelites was the fact that the inhabitants of Canaan worshipped false gods and held to evil customs. This rendered them unworthy of the land, so God ran them out of it and brought in some new inhabitants. Numbers 33:51-53 says, “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan; Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places: And ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein: for I have given you the land to possess it.”
This principle holds true anywhere on the earth. God has given the earth to the children of men, but He expects to be honored by the children of men as well. When a people embrace polytheism, paganism, idolatry and witchcraft, God reserves the right to destroy them or to move them to another land. Even the Israelites were carried out of their homeland into foreign lands due to their sins. To assume that the Indians were exempt from God’s standard is nothing less than willful ignorance. They were not exempt, so God kicked them out of the land and entrusted the land to someone else.
That someone else just happened to be descendants of Japheth, a people that God said would be enlarged so much that they would dwell in the tents of Shem (Gen. 9:27). Europeans are from Japheth, and Indians are from Shem. Europeans, for the most part, have traditionally believed in one God and that He is to be worshipped through His Son Jesus Christ. The Indians have traditionally believed in various gods, ancestor worship, reincarnation, paganism and occultism. Therefore, God saw fit to give us the land. I don’t agree with everything we did to get the land, the Trail of Tears, and all that, but the basic fact is that God wanted the Indians out and He wanted us in, and that’s what happened. Glory be to God!
God gave the North American continent to us and we’ve done more good with it in the past 400 years than the pagan Indians did with it in the previous 4,000 years. Did they build any churches? No. Did they send out any missionaries? No, we sent missionaries to them, even at government expense. Did they build any hospitals? No. Did they build any schools? No. Did they build any railroads? No. Did they plant millions of acres and become the breadbasket of the world? No. Did they liberate any nations from evil dictators? No, they just did the green corn dance and worshipped the spirit of grandpa. You can take your guilt trip to someone else because I’m not riding.
I know there were some negatives associated with our taking over this land, and I’m not justifying every unjust deed, but, just as in the case with Joseph, God meant it unto good, and much good has come as a result. I feel no guilt, and neither should you.
II. AMERICA’S INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY
That’s another stop on the great American guilt trip. You’re supposed to feel perpetually indebted to the black race because of the way some of your ancestors treated some of their ancestors. You’re supposed to support “affirmative action” and black political candidates just because we had black slaves in this country 150 years ago. In all walks of life, we are expected to show special favor for blacks just because of the institution of slavery in this country between the 1620’s and the 1860’s. Go ahead, if you happen to be that shallow, and burden yourself with another yoke of bondage after Christ has set you free! Enslave yourself with guilt and pretend that that somehow atones for what some of your ancestors did. If you’re that shallow, then you probably deserve the guilt. So, go ahead and have a nice ride.
As for the rest of us, let’s use the brain that God gave us. What were the Africans doing in 1620 before we began buying them from their own people? Were they over there worshipping God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ? Were they winning their lost brethren to Christ and building Bible-believing churches? Were they sending out Christian missionaries to far away lands? No! No! No! They were running around naked in the bushes, eating one another, killing one another, practicing voodoo, and going to Hell by the millions! Had they never seen a white man they would still be doing the same thing. Some of you people don’t see it that way because you are carnally-minded and you aren’t concerned with the souls of men. God is concerned about souls (II Pet. 3:9), and He saw to it that a lot of black people came to know Christ as a result of their contact with white people, including slave masters.
David Livingstone didn’t blaze his missionary trail through Africa until the mid 1800’s, yet God found a way to get the gospel to many of these people long before then. For over 200 years Africans sold their own people to white slave traders who in turn sold them in America. Most of these slaves ended up on southern plantations, which just happened to be in the Bible belt where the Gospel was widely preached by the end of the 1700’s. Hundreds of thousands of black slaves went to regular church services with their masters, and a great many of them heard open air preaching by men like George Whitfield, Gilbert Tennent, and Peter Cartwright. As the old Baptists like Shubel Stearns and Daniel Marshall were spreading the Gospel across the south, blacks everywhere were receiving Christ as their Saviour. One such slave was Jane Georgiana, who once said, “De times was better fo’ de war . . . I goes to church an sings an prays, and when de good Lord teks me, Ise ready to go, and I specs to see Jesus an’ Ole Mistis an Ole Master when I gits to de he’benly land!” Do you think she would have said that had she lived and died in Africa?
Look, slavery is over; it’s a thing of the past. But the white throne judgment is yet to come (Rev. 20:11-15), and there will be a great many lost African people there that would give anything if they could only go back to Africa, get sold into slavery, and travel to America to hear the gospel. The mistreatment they might receive as slaves would be a “light affliction” (II Cor. 4:17) compared to the burning lake of fire that they’ll receive at the white throne judgment. Sure, slavery was a bad thing, but it wasn’t as bad as dying inAfrica and going to Hell. If I owe the black man anything, then I pay him every time I preach on the streets, every time I print or hand out a gospel tract, every week when I ship literature into the prison system, and every time I update or renew our web site. To this very hour, millions of black people in America have access to the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ, something that they would not usually have in Africa. Take the guilt trip, if you want, but I think they got a pretty good deal, compared to what they had. After all, I don’t see them migrating back to Africa, do you? Big brother, Japheth, must be treating Ham better than we are told.
III. AMERICA’S STATUS AS A WEALTHY WORLD POWER
It has become popular in these times to criticize America for being a prosperous world super power. The liberal establishment takes great delight in pointing out how many nations of the world are so far less fortunate than the United States. That’s supposed to make you feel guilty for having the things for which you and your ancestors have prayed, worked, fought and saved. As always, these twisted people have overlooked the hand of God.
Israel serves as a great model for showing us how God deals with nations. Deuteronomy 28:11-13 says, “And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them.” I know that America has declined drastically, and I do not justify much of what has occurred in this country for the past fifty years. I believe payday has come and that some very perilous times are ahead for our country. We can’t expect the blessings of heaven when we kick God and the Bible out of our schools, join Sodomites in marriage, and kill 4,000 babies per day. I believe the days of blessing and prosperity are over, but that doesn’t change our glorious past. Traditionally, Americans have been a hard-working, moral and charitable people who have believed in the Christian God of the Bible. That’s pretty good, compared to other nations, and God has traditionally blessed our nation because of it.
Let me remind you that before our Pilgrim fathers set foot on the American continent they stated that part of their purpose for coming here was “for ye glorie of God, and advancement of ye Christian faith” (Mayflower Compact). That sounds like something that God might be interested in blessing, does it not? Do you suppose that China or Indiahave such documents in their history? How about Nigeria, Algeria, and Egypt? How about El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatamala? Not so much. Last time I checked, we send missionaries to those people.
Let me remind you that when we drafted our great Declaration of Independence, we felt the need to honor the Creator God of the Bible in distinction from all the false gods of other nations and cultures.
Let me remind you that the writings of our founding fathers are filled with references to God, the Bible, and Jesus Christ. Let me remind you that when each of our fifty states drafted their state constitutions, this same God was honored once again. When we recite the pledge of allegiance to our flag, we declare that we are “one nation under God,” not one nation under “the gods” or under Mary, the Pope, or Allah. To this very hour, our coins display the inscription “IN GOD WE TRUST.”
I’m not saying that we presently trust God as a great Christian nation. I’m saying that our history is filled with acknowledgements of and a general obedience to the God of the Bible. Until the mid 1900’s, we even taught the Bible in our schools while praying and displaying the Ten Commandments. We’ve built more churches and sent out more missionaries than any nation in history. As a result, America has brought more souls to Christ than any other nation.
We have also been, by far, the most charitable nation in history. In addition to evangelizing the world, we have fed the world, educated the world, and we have supplied more aid and relief to the world than most other nations combined. We have led the world with inventions and discoveries in the fields of medicine, energy, housing, agriculture, transportation and communication. We have sent our young men and young women to fight and die on foreign battlefields so that others might enjoy the same freedoms that we enjoy. Yet, what do we get in return? We get envy, hatred, terrorism, and a bunch of liberal communists and socialists trying to give us the guilt trip for being so prosperous. No, thanks! We are prosperous because God has blessed us and made us prosperous, and we owe no one an apology for it. For the better part of our history, we have been good stewards with our God-given prosperity, and I, for one, am not taking the guilt trip. Neither will you, if you have any sense. In spite of our present state, we have historically been a good and useful nation in the hands of God. I refuse to bow to those who want to re-write history and spread their own guilt around to the rest of us.
God, help us to know and remember our good heritage. Help us to speak and write of it loud and often, and help us to pass it on to our children. For Jesus’ sake, amen.