Sins of Our Fathers

Deuteronomy 5: 9 has always been a hard verse to me.

 9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 10 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments." Deuteronomy 5: 9-10

They knelt in prayer, and not for the first time. They had gathered together before and called on their Lord. Today as before, they asked that God would use them as an instrument of his righteous judgment, that He would protect and deliver them as they sought to do his will. The men rose to their feet - Joshua and Tom Chamberlain, John Ferguson, the Noble brothers - Stephen, Ryle, Robert and John, and their cousins Dallas and James Noble. The Nobles' friend and neighbor, Matt McGuire was there too. Three generations before, their grandfathers' fathers had stood shoulder to shoulder and fought together, but this morning as they rose from prayer, something was different. Captain John Ferguson stepped out from the line of trees and urged the Georgians of his 13th Regiment to follow. Down the line, the Nobles, McGuire and other men of the Ashley County Volunteers, 3rd Arkansas Infantry did the same. Across the field, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and his brother, Lieutenant Tom Chamberlain called their regiment, the 20th Maine, into line. In the minds of all the men swirled thoughts of God's will, their families, their righteous cause, their bond with the men to their left and right. The familiar cannon barrage was underway and the lines began to advance. Up and down the line men raised their rifles, and with hearts full of contempt from years of unresolved sin, they fired on each other, killing and maiming their fellow countrymen by the thousands.

Four years earlier in 1859, during his campaign against Stephen Douglas for the Whitehouse, the call for secession in the South had become more fervent. Lincoln reflected on the correspondence from 23 pastors that he held in his hand, saying to an advisor,

"Here are twenty-three ministers of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three... I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see a storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me - and I think He has - I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but the truth is everything. I know I am right because I know liberty is right, for Christ teaches it and Christ is God. I have told them that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand' and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God's help I shall not fail. I may not see the end, but it will come, and I will be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright."

Lincoln won the election of 1860 and secession and the war came. Six hundred thousand American men, many of them brothers-in-Christ, slaughtered each other. Reading from the same Bible, pastors from the north and the south encouraged their congregants to fulfill God's will and go to war. Why? Why did God allow this tragedy? Why did he bless the South with superior military leadership in men such as Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson - both devout Christians - that permitted the prolonging of the war and the bloodshed? In March, 1865, during the last weeks of the war, Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. A layman, he seemed to have come to grips with the providence of God in answering these questions.

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses 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 offense 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 wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman'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." Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865

Their grandfathers' fathers had been unable to reconcile the divisive issue of slavery, and they had created a nation whose foundation in liberty was strong, but whose members, corrupted by the spreading rot of slavery were destined to collapse. It seemed a necessary compromise at the time, but the cost for not excising this moral cancer would be paid by their black bondsmen and, eventually, 85 years later, by their third and fourth generation white descendants.

That three days of battle at Gettysburg would see 15 year old James Noble die of his wounds while his brother Dallas, also wounded, would survive. Cousin Ryle Noble was captured. Joshua Chamberlain would earn the Medal of Honor. During the remaining two years of the war Dallas would again be wounded and out of the war along with his cousin Stephen Noble who was severely wounded at The Wilderness. After surviving the bloody series of battles in the summer of 1864, John Noble slipped through the union lines at the Siege of Petersburg, VA, and walked home to Arkansas, AWOL. By April 9, 1865, Joshua Chamberlain had been severely wounded twice and had risen to the rank of Brevet Major General. He was selected by Grant to receive the formal surrender of Robert E. Lee's Confederate infantry, including Captain John Ferguson, Matt McGuire and the only Noble remaining in service, Robert. After being paroled, John Ferguson returned to his family in Georgia, and Robert Noble and Matt McGuire walked home to Ashley County Arkansas.

Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address reflected his understanding of the spiritual truth expressed in Deuteronomy. The third and fourth generations of both pro slavery and anti slavery Americans paid for the sins of their fathers. My Noble and Ferguson ancestors, all slave owners, paid through death and maiming in the Civil War and afterwards. But it wasn't just the sins of their fathers, they had themselves succumbed to the same sin and it seemed as if their descendants would continue paying the price. Of my Ferguson and Noble ancestors who survived the war, one would murder and another be murdered. Families were sometimes fractured and strained with abuse and hardships. It wasn't universally so - there had been clergy, Baptist preachers in the family before the war and there continued to be afterward. But standing in the pulpit had proven not to be an assurance of being right with God, of loving not only Him, but their neighbors also.

Deuteronomy 5:9 is hard not because I believe God is unjust or cruel, but because he is just, and what it says about me as a son and a father. God does not punish me for my father nor the father because of the son. I bring judgement on myself, and if I'm not careful, I may influence my children to embrace my sinful perspectives for my sake. I don't need to justify or embrace my people's, my family's sins, I can love them in spite of it, as I hope they love me. Through grace and forgiveness my family's story is not binding on my life, and through grace and forgiveness, my legacy to my children will not be the sins of their father, but the love of their heavenly Father.

Tom Noble, September 12, 2020