Jeremiah 20: 7-13 (links validated 5/23/23)

While we were on vacation, Jim and I came across John Brown’s farm in North Elba, New York. You will remember John Brown the abolitionist who led the raid on the armory at Harpers’ Ferry just before the Civil War. I mentioned our visit to his farm to some friends who told me about a book based on his life called Good Lord Bird. It has just been released as a TV series. I wanted to show you a clip from it, but everything I could find was too violent for our context. So I just have this screen shot. Until two weeks ago, what I knew about John Brown was what I learned in middle school social studies, that he was an abolitionist who was executed for insurrection at Harper’s Ferry. It turns out that his story is much more complicated than that. But based on that memory from school, I guess I pictured him fairly mild-mannered, maybe like I imagined the scholarly Henry David Thoreau who went to jail for refusing to pay his taxes. If you had asked, I might have described John Brown like that, but just a bit tougher. Then I watched the first episode of Good Lord Bird where Brown is portrayed as wild and slightly mad. And because Jeremiah lives in my brain right now, I began to wonder what John Brown and Jeremiah might have in common. John Brown’s biographers described him as both “extraordinary” and “a victim of mental delusions.” Some called him a terrorist, but others said that his struggle against slavery was very personal and religious. Biographer Stephen Oates said that he was “maligned as a demented dreamer, but that he was in fact one of the most perceptive human beings of his generation.”...

Donald Woods was the editor of the Daily Dispatch, a South African newspaper. He had been raised in a middle class family, had attended the right schools, and had defended apartheid, the system of racial segregation and discrimination that reigned for so long in South Africa. Then something changed his life. It was such a small thing, but it made such a big difference. He read these words by Abraham Lincoln: "What is morally wrong can never be politically right." He then had the opportunity to interview Prime Minister Vorster, who claimed to be a Christian. Woods asked Vorster how he could reconcile apartheid with his Christian faith. He says, "I then saw the first real flash of anger." He knew he was asking for trouble, but knew also that he must continue. Woods exposed in his newspaper the evils of jailing or banning opponents of apartheid. He found himself being shadowed by security police. His phones were bugged. He then threatened to reveal the truth about the black leader, Steve Biko, who was beaten to death in his jail cell. This time he had gone too far. He was banned to his home. Realizing that his life was in danger, he and his family made a daring escape to England on New Year's Day, 1978. He wrote a book entitled Asking for Trouble, an account of his struggle against apartheid and the high price he paid...

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