Devotional: If God Can Tell Our Uncomfortable History, Why Can't We?

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If God Can Tell Our Unpleasant History, Why Can’t We

Without question W.E.B. Du Bois the American sociologist, historian, author, editor, and activist is one the most important Black leaders in the world. He helped found the NAACP and edited The Crisis its magazine. Educated at Fisk and Harvard where he received his Ph.D. in 1895 Dr. Du Bois taught at the then Atlanta University. His collection of essays The Souls of Black Folk published in 1903 continues to be a landmark of American literature.

In his 1935 book Black Reconstruction in America Dr. Du Bois wrote:

We have too often made deliberate attempts to change the facts of history so that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans.

The echoes of Dr. Du Bois words ring true today as the House Speaker has given security tapes of the January 6 uprising to a rightwing media host so that the history of that day can be made more pleasant. Governors across the nation are enacting laws restricting what teachers in kindergarten, elementary, high school and college can teach ensuring that the story of our history remains pleasant. And school boards in the north, south, east, and west are banning books all in the name of keeping anything that is unpleasant away from students.

All this suppression of facts in the name of keeping things pleasant has me wondering if God can tell our unpleasant history, why can’t we?

The Bible while inspiring and uplifting is filled with unpleasant stories. The fall of humankind as Adam and Eve tumble into the devil’s scheme. The rape Tamar and also of Bathsheba by men who used their power to take sex. God’s rapture as described in Revelation is as unpleasant as reading can get. And there is the killing of Jesus on the cross, nails in hands, hanging from the 6th to the 9th hour it is unpleasant.

God provides us with this unpleasant history so we can learn, so we can grow so we can live without fear.

Dr. Du Bois reasoned that fear is the driving force behind the whitewashing of history. In Black Reconstruction in America he writes:

Standing in the back of the writhing, yelling, cruel-eyed demons’ mobs who break, destroy, maim, and lynch and burn at the stake, people of color. There is a knot, large or small, of normal human beings, and these human beings at heart are desperately afraid of something. Of what? Of many things, but usually of losing their jobs, being declassed, degraded, or actually disgraced; of losing their hopes, their savings, their plans for their children; of the actual pangs of hunger, of dirt, of crime.

It is this fear that people like the Governor of Florida, the Speaker of the House and the 44th President of the United States use to wipe out the unpleasantness of history. For they are fearful that with the truth their power is gone.

The Bible is full of unpleasant truths – and with those truths God has not lost any of his power. And neither will you if you embrace the unpleasant truths of the Bible and the unpleasant truths of our own lives for if if God can tell our unpleasant history, why can’t we?

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