Chains of the Living

Much to the surprise of, well everyone who caught me lurking in the corners and soaking up its pages, I recently decided to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. People asked if I was reading it for school or if I was a teacher, no one ever assumed it was for my own enjoyment. My mother had read this tragically triumphant tale to me as a child but I didn’t remember much except a sad yearning that often lead me to pray for the gripping characters as I would a friend, when they came to mind.

“The little lady who started the big war,” a quote rumored to have been spoken by President Lincoln which, if he didn’t say it, he should have. Harriet Beecher Stowe makes no qualms about the realities of slavery both in its most ideal and most heinous circumstances. Charles Dickens only criticism of the book (which he wrote to her personally) is that she might “go too far and seek to prove too much.” She often ends chapters with a pleading toward the reader to feel what her characters must be going through, although we already are. Her clearly thought out logic combined with wrenching emotions makes a story that needs no justification.

Most intriguing to me now are the “conservative” ideals which she held to while pushing radically righteous action among those who shared her convictions. Being a woman, her domain was in the home and interestingly enough, she chose not to overtly rebel against this system which wished to confine her to private and domestic duties. Instead, she used the book to redefine what should be public and private. This is especially fascinating to me now, not as a woman necessarily but as a Christian. Current philosophy automatically delegates religious sentiment to the private sphere. Francis Schaeffer explained this division in two parts. The “Upper Story” relegates all personal preferences (especially in religion and “values”) to this nonrational, noncognitive group. The “Lower Story” holds scientific knowledge which is rational and verifiable. And never the two shall meet. This is how, like women of that day, Christianity stays “in its place” today. If it holds no bearing in the public realm it has no voice except among its own. The Church also has grasped this philosophy by categorizing everything into that which is sacred and that which is secular.

We have something vitally important to learn from Stowe, besides the horrible sins our country pervaded or the same sins that were defended by those who claimed belief in the Word of God, we must learn to change the conversation. Jesus doesn’t just live in our hearts, He is alive and infinitely involved in a public and rational world in which horrible things occur, sometimes even in His name. Stowe demanded respect from all types of audiences. Without argument she placed herself in the conversation that would have traditionally excluded her entirely.

The truth is in that day, women weren’t much freer than slaves, only generally treated better. Harriet Beecher Stowe, quietly carrying every chain that had been given her, entered the free man’s conversation and not only turned it upside down but turned it into action. Christians are letting ideas of today keep Truth shackled in the “private” sphere. Yet we know the world doesn’t have that power over us. In the chilling words of dear Uncle Tom before he is brutally beaten: No! no! no! my soul an’t yours!.. You haven’t bought it, - ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it.

Change the conversation. Ask questions that need to be asked. Don’t let postmodern ideology keep what we know to be Truth shackled to the private sphere only.