22 January 2024 Mark 3:22-30
On June 16, 1858, while the issue of slavery was still heating up but had not yet boiled over into civil war, Abraham Lincoln gave his famous “House Divided” speech in a Senate race in Illinois with the incumbent Stephen A. Douglas. The whole country was listening, because it was believed these two men were the likeliest candidates in the upcoming presidential election of 1860, which of course they were: “’A house divided against itself cannot stand,’” Lincoln said. “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
Lincoln wasn’t worried about a fallen house, a fallen government, a fallen country. He was worried about it becoming all one thing, or all the other.
Lincoln was a bit of a conspiracy theorist at the time. He reflected that on January 1, 1854 slavery was excluded from more than half the states by state constitutions, and it was prohibited from U.S. territories by federal law. But then in rapid and orderly succession came the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Bleeding Kansas, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, and all of a sudden it was becoming possible, maybe even likely, that free states could be turned back into slave states, and the strategy of Stephen Douglas was to persuade northern states, asking, “Why do you care?” He said he didn’t care if a territory voted slavery up or down, as long as they got to have their own say. Of course, Douglas had also said, “This government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men…. Any mixture or amalgamation with inferior races [can only lead to] degeneration, demoralization and degradation.”
But still he asked, “Why do you care?”
Lincoln replied, in essence, “Why do we care? How about because it isn’t true? How about because the Declaration of Independence is true: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”
Lincoln wasn’t so concerned that the house would fall, but that it would become all one thing, or all the other. All free hopefully, but maybe all slave.
We can hear the heirs of Stephen Douglas still: “Why do you care? Why do you care if a man thinks he’s a woman, or a woman thinks she’s a man? Why do you care if someone decides to get an abortion? ‘My body, my choice,’ right?”
Why do we care? How about because it’s not true? Men can’t become women, nor women become men, and babies have their own bodies, independent of their parents. And if people, if the government, if the culture persists, insists on believing things that aren’t true, then inevitably there will be people who say, “What do I need to repent for? Why do you care? One person’s sin is another’s salvation, right? You do you, I’ll do me.”
All sins, and all blasphemies will be forgiven. But there is one that will not, viz., to reject the agent of God’s healing and mercy (Mark 3:28-29): “What do I need to repent for? Why do you care? You do you, I’ll do me.” People are in true mortal peril if they reject the God at work in Jesus.
The house may not fall; more likely it will become all one thing, or all the other.
Some things are true, others not. Jesus didn’t want to lose anyone. Neither do we. That’s why we care.
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