The road which chooses us

Steven Spielberg’s superb new movie Lincoln focuses on the last months in the life of American President Abraham Lincoln prior to his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln has just been re-elected to a second term in office, and the bloody Civil War between the northern ‘Union’ states and the breakaway Confederates is coming to an end.

The President is struggling to bring peace and a ‘new birth of freedom’ to the nation and sees as central to fulfilling this aim the passage of the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery in the United States.

It’s very clear from the film that Lincoln’s life in these months was shaped by profound faith, and by the conviction that God had entrusted a pivotal role to him at a crucial time in the nation’s history.

At one point in the movie, Lincoln says to an aide ‘Do you think we choose to be born? Or are we fitted to the times we’re born into?’

We can ask the same question. Is it a mere accident that I am alive now, living in the Scottish Highlands at this particular point in history? Or have I, with my personality and particular mix of abilities been placed here, at this time, with a purpose, with a role to fulfil? Did former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway have in mind something like this when he wrote that in life we do not choose the road, rather the road chooses us?

I’ve been reading Stephen Mansfield’s book Lincoln’s Battle with God – a moving account of the great man’s struggle with destiny, with faith, with personal grief and tragedy, and with ‘the Lincoln horrors’, the family legacy of depression.

As a young man, Lincoln rejected the God of his childhood, perhaps projecting on to the face of God his rage at his own father’s cruelty. For a time, he lost all belief in God; then he came to acknowledge a remote, unengaged deity; finally he came to place his trust in a loving, holy, responsive God who would guide him both personally and as a national leader. ‘Looking up to Him for wisdom and divine guidance I must work my destiny as best I can.’

I love this man, because I see in him so much of myself. Like me, he is never done thinking, questioning, struggling, seeking encouragement. About one period of his life he wrote ‘I do not claim that all my doubts were removed then, or since that time have been swept away. They are not. Probably it is to be my lot to go on in a twilight, feeling and reasoning my way through life, as questioning, doubting Thomas did.’ This rings true in my experience. I suspect the ‘twilight’ of which Lincoln writes is the shadow cast by melancholy.

But he continues ‘In my poor maimed, withered way, I bear with me as I go on a seeking spirit of desire for faith which was with him of olden times (he’s referring to a character in the Bible) who in his need as I in mine exclaimed: “Help thou my unbelief.”’

There was growth in the President between his 1861 Inaugural Address at the start of his first term in office before the dark days of Civil War and his second Address four years later. In 1861, he emphasised the power of human will to bring change. By 1865 he had come to believe that God was at work in history, that the War was God’s judgement on the nation for countenancing slavery, that ‘the mercy of God alone can save us’, and that, as Mansfield puts it ‘men are the means by which God fulfils his will.’

And this fulfilling of God’s will is not always something which is done without our realising, rather it can be a conscious, God-led fulfilment. As Lincoln himself said ‘I have had so many evidences of His direction.’

There a discussion to be had about political leaders who claim to take direction from God, but in Abraham Lincoln’s case, I believe there is no doubt that his openness to God helped fulfil his destiny and bring the United States out of turmoil into the freedom of which he spoke.

So it was not simply that the road, his destiny found him. For Lincoln actively sought out the road, and struggled to fulfil his destiny in each step of the journey.

And so it is with is. Each of us is here for a purpose to fulfil in the quiet routines of everyday life. The road beckons, challenging us to step out in the conviction that, as Lincoln said ‘when the Almighty wants me to do or not to do a particular thing, He finds ways of letting me know it.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 7th February 2013)