JOIN, or DIE

See Endnotes [ii]

Today, my school, Heritage Classical Academy[i]  held a playdate event at the new playground we just installed. Watching these young five- and six-year-olds climbing, sliding, chasing each other, and laughing, I was wondering what kind of future we are leaving for them. The present seems so fraught with turmoil.

The Bible deals with this very topic. One doesn’t have to read far in the Old Testament to read stories of people whining, committing treachery, and fighting. 

Really, how does God put up with us?

God puts up with me in the same way I put up with my own children. He loves all of us. He gave us life. He made us. He gave us rules to live by and when we failed that, he gave us a savior who died for us. He didn’t quit. He kept loving us.

Loving is what I can do for my own children. I keep loving them. Even when they make mistakes, drive me crazy, I love them anyway. Thank goodness though, they are all grown up.

I love them because God has put this capacity for grace and kindness into my heart.

But do I listen?

It is hard to hear and remember God when there is trouble in so many places and in so many ways, and on so many levels. Whatever it is, whether a fractious school board election, a church dispute, a family squabble, or a foreign war, contention surrounds. The temptation is to withdraw, avoid the church, and turn off the news.

This week, I was speaking with a reader of this column, and I told her about the political cartoon shown in this essay.

“Join, or Die.”

It was the first political cartoon in our country. Its author, no other than Dr. Benjamin Franklin, created it for the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. Long before the American Revolution during the French and Indian Wars, the American colonies were divided and fractious, just like us. His point was that the colonies had to cooperate. If they literally didn’t want to die, they needed to unite. They could not defeat their real enemies without joining together.

This is where we are now. “Unite, or die.”

Let us cast aside our differences. Let us repent our anger. The goal of the Christian is simple. Love the Lord, work for God’s glory by loving our neighbor.

In 1865, Abraham Lincoln, in a conversation about the war with Noah Brooks, said, “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”

Have you been angry? Felt overwhelmed? Frustrated? Felt like quitting? Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to fall on the knees and ask the good Lord for help in forgiving and wisdom.

With the 249th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence coming in just a few days, let us call those old friends, family, and our neighbors. Reach out. Be a doer. Honor the flag. Read the Declaration aloud even just for yourself.

Spiritual enemies and demons abound. These are real enemies. They love to see division. Our protection is to love God, love our neighbors, stay in his Word, seek the good, the true, and beautiful.

Remember! The children on that playground are our future.

Join, or die.

[i] Heritage Classical Academy is a public charter school in Houston. Located on 1130 W. 34th Street, it is opening this August. Currently, we are enrolling children who are entering Kindergarten and First Grade. www.HeritageEd.org.

[ii] From Wikipedia. Join, or Die. is a political cartoon showing the disunity in the American colonies, originally in the context of the French and Indian War in 1754. Attributed to Benjamin Franklin, the original publication by The Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754,[1] is the earliest known pictorial representation of colonial union produced by an American colonist in Colonial America.[2] It was based on a superstition that if a snake was cut in pieces and the pieces were put together before sunset, the snake would return to life.

The cartoon is a woodcut showing a snake cut into eighths, with each segment labeled with the initials of one of the American colonies or regions. New England was represented as one segment, rather than the four colonies it was at that time. Delaware was not listed separately as it was part of Pennsylvania. Georgia, however, was omitted completely. As a result, it has eight segments of a snake rather than the traditional 13 colonies.[3] The poster focused solely on the colonies that claimed shared identities as Americans. The cartoon appeared along with Franklin's editorial about the "disunited state" of the colonies and helped make his point about the importance of colonial unity. It later became a symbol of colonial freedom during the American Revolutionary War. At the time, the English were fighting the French in Europe and in America. This episode became known as The French and Indian War because the French bribed several Indian tribes with weapons to attack the English colonists.