As I mentioned on Friday, I was traveling this weekend. I was in Washington, D.C., where the world, the flesh and the devil meet in a swirling vortex of power and greed.
While I was there I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue past the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where plots against Trump were hatched and dirty information on Joe and Hunter Biden was suppressed. I walked down Constitution Avenue past the Department of Justice where Merrick Garland had the audacity to green light a raid on Donald J. Trump’s personal home, a first in American history, over nothing more than “classified” documents that he had the inherent power to declassify as he wished.
I wasn’t filled with pride when I saw these buildings; I was filled with revulsion at the sickening abuse of power that they represent.
There were some good experiences that offset the grim reminders those granite buildings represented. I walked through the National Archives (right next door to the DOJ) and saw the originals of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Those made my heart swell with pride over the foresight and wisdom of our Founding Fathers, who created the freest country the world has ever known.
But even they, in all their earthly wisdom, couldn’t make something that would outlast the evil in the human heart. I’ve quoted it before and will quote it a hundred more times before I die, but John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Generally speaking, we are no longer a “moral and religious People.” The people currently in the government “of, by and for the People” are drawn out of that no-longer-religious community. They are, with few exceptions, of, by and for themselves.
A good example of how this plays out was in the National Archives’ gift shop. As I walked through it something felt “off” to me. I couldn’t place my finger on it until it occurred to me that while there were facsimiles of our founding documents and pocket Constitutions and stickers and magnets and pencils and coffee cups and T-shirts, there were very few representations of the MEN who wrote these documents. Instead, what I saw were sections devoted to women and minorities.
I have no problem with acknowledging that women played a role in our founding, or that minorities also contributed. But the degree to which they were represented in the gift shop was all out of proportion to the contributions they made. Again, not to disparage any group, but it wasn’t women and minorities who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
It doesn’t matter that it was a patriarchal society — you can’t make that “right” by somehow downplaying or demonizing men and increasing the presence of women in a gift shop.
Yet, that’s what I saw. And that is a direct result of a grievance, which comes from feeling a dissatisfaction or perceiving an injustice, which is believing you have been wronged — and that is exacerbated by not getting the justice or revenge you think you deserve.
Somehow, those in charge think they are getting “justice” by replacing our history or emphasizing minor actors out of proportion to their contributions. Unfortunately, all they’re doing is distorting history.
True justice for things done a hundred or two hundred years ago can’t be had. But, someday, the True Judge of all mankind will bring justice to bear and make all things right across all time.
Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!
— Isaiah 30:18