The Inconvenience of History

I love everyone who loves me, and I will be found by all who honestly search.

Proverbs 8:17 CEB

Did everyone leap and shout a hallelujah chorus over finding this light? Nah. According to Paulette Meier, this is what happened:

“The Quaker movement was seen as a huge threat to the state and Church of England, and later to the Puritans as well. The Quakers—also known as the Religious Society of Friends—had no use for the hierarchy, nor the rites and rituals of the church, and believed they were re-igniting primitive Christianity. They refused to pay the church taxes or to carry out social norms that put one class of people higher than another, such as tipping one’s hat to a person of nobility. They were also opposed to war and violence, which did not help their situation with the state. It was their deep conviction and inner peace that allowed them to withstand the brutal oppression that came down on them in the form of long jail sentences, confiscation of property, and torture. Thousands were imprisoned and hundreds died there. William Penn was owed a big debt by the King of England, and he managed to acquire land in the American colony, which is how so many Quakers were able to flee English persecution and come here, where they played a huge role in establishing freedom of religion in the formation of the U.S.”

And...in so doing, they eventually displaced the indigenous people who had claimed this same land as their own long before the Quakers needed a sanctuary. I’m not sure that those folks felt the same enthusiasm for this move as the Quakers fleeing persecution.

History is so inconvenient.

And yet, whether we are reading about history or living it, this is what we have to work with. How do we center ourselves in a world that so often requires one person’s gain to be another’s loss? How do we love others? How do we imitate a God who is eager to be found and recognized by the light of his love?