The Judgments of the Lord

If National Public Radio is a reliable barometer of culture, the question of reparations to descendants of slaves continues to be a hot debate amongst our nation’s intelligentsia. The argument for reparations goes something like this: African-Americans, as a class of persons, were set back economically and socially by chattel slavery. The descendants of slaves, therefore, should receive a financial settlement which would enable them to attain the status they might otherwise have had. The argument against points out the near-impossibility of determining who ought to pay whom, and questions the obligation of the current generation to pay for crimes in which they had no part.

In formulating a response, let us make several stipulations.
 1) Chattel slavery, as practiced in the United States of old and around the world today, is the Biblical sin of man-stealing (Deuteronomy 24:7), and therefore a crime worthy of criminal and civil punishment.
 2) Reparation is a Biblically appropriate punishment for theft (Exodus 22:1).
 3) Paying financial reparations to descendants of slaves today would almost certainly create new injustices, not least that of visiting the sins of the father on the son (Ezekiel 18). What, then, ought we as a nation do? Abraham Lincoln addressed the issue in his Second Inaugural Address:

…The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope- fervently do we pray- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God will that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”

According to President Lincoln, reparations have already been exacted by the Lord through the terrible war he visited on these United States. Why have his words been ignored in the current debate? Because those who argue for reparations, indeed, because even we Presbyterians who confess God’s sovereignty over history, have forgotten that the God who poured out His wrath on his Son in space and time in order to redeem His beloved people also visits His righteous judgments upon sinners in space and time. He has done so since He laid the foundations of the world, and will do so until and on the Last Day. When we forget this, we begin worrying, fretting justice will not be done, sin never be redressed. We act as though God does not exist, and we must do His work ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln understood history is theocentric. The Lord of the heavens is Lord of history, working all events to his good purposes. He calls us to see His hand at work in the world, and not only to be content, but to rejoice in all He has done. “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” (Psalm 19:9)