JCK-at-large SITE

Goodness, as the streets of America burst into flame during this summer’s unrest, you wondered if democratic structures themselves were being consumed.

Minneapolis-St.Paul was visited by someone called “the umbrella man,” who liked to get in the middle of a riot and start fires. A video of “umbrella man” went viral after protesters in Minneapolis filmed him on May 27 — while he was in the act of smashing several windows of an AutoZone store.  Not long after, looting began, and the AutoZone was set on fire.  “This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city,” said the arson investigators.  According to the Wall Street Journal, such arsonists had been very busy during the MSP riots and caused “unbelievable devastation.”  Ingebretsen’s gift store and meat market, which has been a fixture on Lake Street since the 1920s, was among the businesses damaged.  “It’s like a war came through here last night,” said Julie Ingebretsen, granddaughter of the store’s founders: “It’s just destruction. And it makes me so sad, I can hardly stand it.”  

Then, in Portland, Oregon, “yet another riot was declared on the eighty-third night of trouble!  A two-hundred-strong mob of protesters, rallying for the total abolition of prison system and police force, torched the city’s famous Multnomah Building, the county seat of government. There they smashed windows and sparked a blaze by pushing lit newspapers through the windows. Portland police declared a riot at around 11:30 p.m.  In the end, there were numerous arrests amid reports of stabbings and a shooting:  “How will this end, and how will the violence stop?” asked Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell. “The community needs to come together to denounce this criminal activity and call it out.  This does not represent our community values.”

Around that time, I happened to be reading about Moses’ Burning Bush, “on fire, but not consumed” — with a prayer that the same might be said of America, 2020.  When it seems that democracy’s founding structures themselves are on fire, that the very laws which support the rights and responsibilities of a free people are going up in smoke — we need to hope that, like the burning bush, they are aflame, but not consumed: “At Horeb, the mountain of God, the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.  And Moses said, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned’ (Ex 3:3).

Some see the burning bush as a symbol of Moses himself, driven into exile from his homeland — a homeland that had turned so hostile that he barely escaped with this life.  Like John Wesley much later, Moses was a “brand plucked from the burning,” destined to become a leader of historic proportions who was “tried by fire.”  

Others see the burning bush as a symbol of the people of God in all seasons, from Pharoah’s Egypt to Nero’s Rome and beyond.  Birthed in hostility, surviving the fires of persecution, with thousands of its leaders thrown to the lions and, indeed, burnt at the stake — the Christian church may be compared to the burning bush, aflame, yet not consumed.

Devotional poet, George Herbert, described “the pure and virtuous soul” as the only thing which can ultimately survive the flame. Like a burning bush: 

Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 

Like season’d timber, never gives; 

But though the whole world turn to coal, 

Then chiefly lives (‘Virtue’, 1630). 

Of course, Israel itself has seen as a burning bush, surviving genocidal fires of persecution through the centuries that would have incinerated and destroyed a lesser people.  In the 18th Century, Jean Jacques Rousseau could write: “The Jews present us with an outstanding spectacle: the laws of (the ancient kingdoms) of Numa, Lycurgus and Solon are dead; the far more ancient ones of Moses are still alive. Athens, Sparta, and Rome have perished and all their people have vanished from the earth; yet, though destroyed, Zion has not lost her children. They mingle with all nations but are never lost among them; they no longer have leaders, yet they are still a nation; they no longer have a country and yet they are still citizens.”  Adam Clark sees the burning bush as, “an emblem of the state of Israel in its various distresses and persecutions: it was in the fire of adversity, but was not consumed.”

And so for us, in our troubled summer of 2020, we might see one of the world’s great democracies as a burning bush.  And, if so, how we should pray that American democracy, for all its flaws, will survive the conflagrations of 2020!  That the great Pledge of Allegiance will continue to ring out across the land: “One nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”  That the great Constitution, which for over 200 years has been the envy of the world, will stand untinged with its great protections: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”   As James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” of 1789, put it:  “Laws are unconstitutional which infringe on the rights of the community … Government should be disarmed of powers which trench upon those particular rights.”

These principles are touchstones for the world at large, restraining the ever-expanding claims of dictators and ideologists of all stripes. They must be preserved intact and uncharred for the good of us all.  They must withstand the flames of barbarism in all its forms.  Indeed, they must be like the burning bush, “aflame, but not consumed.”  

Otherwise, we are left with ashes.  And a dire warning from Mark Steyn: “You cannot wage a sustained ideological assault on your own civilization without grave consequences.…In our time, to be born a citizen of the United States is to win first prize in the lottery of life, and, as the Britons did, too many Americans assume it will always be so. Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favor of America because you were born in it? Great convulsions lie ahead, and at the end of it we may be in a [much different] world” (After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, 2011).