Sea to Shining Sea

by Michael Phillips

  If I never heard again from Mr. Dalton or anybody else from the Republican party, I would take that as God’s way of saying no.

  The dilemma of whether I should get involved with the election wasn’t the only question my mind was wrestling with since hearing Katie’s sister’s views on slavery. But it was probably the easiest one to resolve.

  In the meantime, I found myself thinking a lot about something Pa had told me about Davy Crockett. They had both fought in the Mexican War, and everyone who fought in California admired the men who died in the same cause at the Alamo.

  Davy Crockett had been a congressman from Tennessee before he went to Texas, and I had read that Mr. Crockett always told folks in Washington he had based his life on the saying, Be sure you’re right, then go ahead. I found myself reflecting on those words every day.

  I kept saying to myself, “Don’t go ahead until you’re sure you’re right.”

  I was pretty certain the cause was right. Now I just had to wait to see if involving myself in it was what God wanted me to do. Figuring that out, as well as waiting, was the hardest part of all.

  Chapter 13

  A Visit With the Rutledges

  I found myself coming away from that afternoon at Uncle Nick and Aunt Katie’s with a heaviness in my heart, a confusion—not about the slavery issue alone, but rather how there could be so many different views on the same thing. I wanted to talk with someone about it, but I didn’t feel that Almeda or Pa would be the right persons. I respected them as much as ever, but maybe because they’d been part of the discussion, and I knew that Almeda herself held pretty strong opinions on things, I wanted to get an outside, unbiased perspective.

  Since it was a spiritual question even more than something to do with issues, I thought of Rev. Rutledge. As a pastor, he not only ought to have answers to spiritual questions, but by now I knew that he didn’t usually voice outspoken views on issues people normally differed about. When it came to the Bible, he said what he had to say without fear and without backing down. But he never took sides about politics or on decisions facing the community. Pa would sometimes get riled when he wanted Rev. Rutledge’s support for something the town council was getting ready to vote on.

  The Rutledges had become our good friends, and we had grown to feel a great deal of respect for Rev. Rutledge since his first awkward days in Miracle Springs. He had changed nearly as much as Pa had. His teaching and his sermons and his outlook on life and Scripture and what being a Christian meant had been important in forming the person I’d grown up to be. There was a lot of Almeda in me, and a lot of Pa. But there were big chunks of Harriet and Avery Rutledge, too. They both had influenced me in different ways.

  So on the Monday after the dinner and discussion, I found myself saddling up my horse and riding down into Miracle Springs for a visit with them. School had been out for a week, and I knew that Rev. Rutledge usually spent Mondays at home, so I hoped to find them both there.

  Harriet opened the door. “Corrie, hello! It’s nice to see you!”

  “I wondered if I might talk with you,” I said. “Both of you, I mean. Is the Reverend at home?”

  “Yes . . . yes, he is. Come in, Corrie—Avery, we have a visitor,” she called out as she led me inside and closed the door.

  I followed her into their sitting room, where Rev. Rutledge was just rising from his chair, a copy of the Alta in his hand.

  “Corrie, welcome,” he said, giving me a warm handshake. “Harriet and I always enjoy your visits.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ve come to ask you about something that is troubling me . . . I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not. Troubled souls are in my line of work,” he said with a laugh.

  “It’s not my soul that’s troubled, only my mind.”

  “I was only jesting. You can feel free to share anything with me, with both of us if you like.”

  “I would like both your opinions,” I said, glancing back at the former Miss Stansberry, whom I still sometimes had a hard time calling by her first name. “It’s not what you’d call a spiritual problem, but there’s something about being a Christian I don’t understand as well as I’d like.”

  “Well, we’ve been through a lot of growing together, Corrie, you and I, and your whole family,” said Rev. Rutledge. “You’ve spent lots of hours in this house talking and praying with Harriet and me, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we’ve learned just as much from you as you might have from either of us.”

  “That could hardly be,” I said, “when I sit and listen to your sermons on most Sundays. I’ve learned more from listening to you talk about the Scriptures than you can imagine.”

  “The best sermons aren’t to be found in church, Corrie.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Do you remember what the apostle Peter said in his first letter? ‘Ye also, as lively stones, are being built up a spiritual house.’ He’s saying that we are the building blocks and bricks of the house that God is building. Then the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about our being living epistles or letters. ‘Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men . . . written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, written not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.’” He paused, then added, “Do you see the connection I’m trying to make?”

  “I always like it better when you tell me instead of my trying to guess,” I answered with a smile.

  He laughed. “People can be stones and letters, according to the Scriptures—living stones and letters. In the same way, people can be sermons too. And living people-sermons are far more powerful than anything a preacher says in church. I suppose the point I am attempting to make is that you make a better sermon just by your life than any thousand sermons I may preach.”

  “That’s nice of you to say, but I’m not sure I believe it,” I said. “When you preach, people listen to what you have to say. Nobody pays that much attention to people going around just living.”

  “Oh, I think you’re wrong about that, Corrie. As a matter of fact, I think it is exactly the reverse. People sit quietly when I’m preaching. But most of them aren’t really listening, not deep down in their hearts. You might be, and a few others. But most people don’t know how to really listen and absorb what another person is saying. There’s an art to listening that most folks don’t know too much about.”

  “I suppose you’re right. But then, what about when people aren’t in church?”

  “People look as if they’re listening in church, when they’re really not. In the same way, out in the midst of life, people look as if they’re not paying that much attention, but they really are. In other words, people listen far more to the living people-sermons around them every day than you would ever know to look at them.”

  “Hmm . . . I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Tell me, has Almeda influenced your life?”

  “You know she has, in a thousand ways.”

  “Why is that, do you think? Is it because of the things she’s said to you, or the person she is?”

  “Of course it’s the second, although she’s taught me a lot too.”

  “Certainly she has. But it’s the living sermon she is that’s gone the deepest inside you, isn’t it? Her words go only so far as she lives them out. What do you think my sermons would mean to you if you never saw my words at work in what I tried to do in the rest of my life?”

  “Not much,” I admitted.

  “How much did you listen to me when I first came?”

  I laughed.

  “There, you see. And when did my sermons start getting into you?”

  “You’re right,” I smiled. “When I saw the real you, when I saw you and Pa trying to form a real relationship.”

  “That’s right. That’s the living stone, the living epistle—the real-life sermon at work. So I stick by what I said to begin with—the best sermons aren’t to be found in church, and your life is as dynamic a sermon
as I’ll ever preach. One that people are watching and observing and listening to all the time.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “You listen to me, Corrie; the Lord has placed you in many situations where you are constantly being a living epistle, a flesh-and-blood sermon to the people you rub shoulders with. You have more influence for him than you realize—and I don’t mean only because you write. The person you are is the living sermon. You can believe me—people are listening to it!”

  I didn’t say anything more for a minute. That word influence had come up again, and I couldn’t help wondering if what Rev. Rutledge had said had any bearing on the decision I was facing.

  Chapter 14

  Trying to Get to the Bottom of Truth

  “Would you like some tea?” asked Harriet as the room fell silent for a few moments.

  “Yes, thank you,” I replied, looking up again.

  “What I meant to say a while ago,” said Rev. Rutledge as his wife went to the stove, “is that we’ve been through a great deal together, and it’s always a pleasure to talk and share with you about anything that is on your mind.”

  “I appreciate it,” I replied.

  “So . . . what is troubling you?”

  I drew in a long breath of air, then let it out slowly. “It’s hard to put into words exactly,” I said finally. “We had a family talk yesterday—you knew that Aunt Katie’s sister was here for a visit?”

  “Yes, I met her yesterday. They were in church.”

  “She and Katie are from Virginia.”

  “Right. That’s what I understand.”

  “Well, we all got to talking about slavery and the dispute over it between the North and the South, and I came away confused.”

  “About whether slavery is right or wrong?”

  “Not exactly that. What I found bothering me as I went to bed last night was that all—on both sides—think they’re right, and they’ve got passages out of the Bible and seemingly religious reasons for thinking what they do. How can people look at the very same thing and then think completely opposite ways about it?”

  “That’s been going on for centuries, Corrie. People look at things differently.”

  “You’d think at least Christian people would be of one mind.”

  “That’s never been the case. Christians have had some of the world’s most bitter arguments.”

  “It doesn’t seem right.”

  “No doubt it isn’t. But it still happens.”

  “Why?”

  “I suppose besides looking at things differently, people also have motives of self that get mixed in with what they believe. So the stands they take on things have as much to do with what they want as what they believe.”

  “Christians ought to be able to separate the two, and take their own wants out of it.”

  “Perhaps they ought to be able to, but not many people can do that—even Christians.”

  “What about truth? Can there be something that’s true down underneath everything? It seems like people ought to be trying to find it if there is.”

  “It always comes back to truth for you, doesn’t it, Corrie?” Rev. Rutledge smiled.

  “I think about it a lot. If a writer doesn’t have a grasp of the truth, it doesn’t seem like there’s much to write about. At least that’s how I’ve come to see it.”

  “Ever since that sermon I preached years ago about Jesus and Pilate.”

  “You sure got me started thinking with that one!”

  “Yes, and apparently you haven’t stopped since.”

  “That’s another thing a writer’s got to do—keep thinking.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, not being a writer myself.”

  “It shouldn’t be any different for a preacher.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  Harriet came in with a tray of tea and cups. She served us, then sat down herself.

  “Well, I don’t care if people have always differed and argued, it seems to me that if there’s such a thing as truth and right and wrong, Christians especially ought to feel the same about it. I don’t understand how two people can both be Christians and believe the exact opposite. One thing can’t be right and wrong at the same time. There’s no sense to it!”

  “Something like slavery?” asked the minister.

  “Not just slavery, but that’s as good an example as there is. Edie said that Abraham had slaves, and slavery is mentioned in the Ten Commandments, and then she said that according to the Bible, slavery is right. Almeda quoted the verse about being made free and then said that slavery went against the truths of the Bible. There they are—both Christians and yet saying the very opposite thing. Doesn’t one of them have to be wrong? Is there a right and wrong about it?”

  “Is it just slavery you’re trying to understand, Corrie?” asked Harriet.

  “No, I don’t suppose it is,” I answered. “I do have to decide if I’m going to write any articles about this election between Mr. Douglas and Mr. Lincoln. I suppose that comes down to the North-South dispute and the question of slavery in the end. But right now I’m trying to understand how two Christians can look at the same thing and see it so differently.”

  A silence filled the small room, and we all took a sip of our tea. I could tell Rev. Rutledge was thinking hard. That was one of the reasons I liked to talk to him, because he didn’t give an answer until he had thought about it first.

  “You’re right about one thing, Corrie,” he said at last. “There has to be such a thing as right and wrong. Otherwise the Bible and its whole message is meaningless. There has to be such a thing as truth, which is the opposite of falsehood.”

  “That’s what I believe, too. Then why isn’t it more clear?”

  “Because people get in the way. They don’t always see as clearly as they should. Their vision gets foggy and blurred, and then truth and right and wrong get muddled up in the process.”

  “Mixing in, like you said before, what they want to believe?”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  “Then if people are going by what they want to think instead of trying to get at what truth is, how do you ever get to the bottom of it? It seems like all you’d do is end up debating your different viewpoints.”

  “That’s all most people do end up doing. To answer your question, if you’re talking to a person who views things only through his own blurry vision of what he himself wants to be true, then you probably can’t get to the bottom of a question like slavery. You just each tell the other what you think and leave it at that.”

  “But there we are back at the question I asked to begin with—how do you get at what the truth is if you don’t know yourself and you want to talk to other Christians about it?”

  “The first thing you have to do, I suppose, is talk and pray things over with people who also want to get down to the underneath layer, down to where truth is, even below what they themselves might want or not want. You can’t get too far in a discussion unless you share that much at least.”

  “That’s why I like to talk to the two of you,” I said. “I know you want to get to things down at that level just like I do.”

  “I hope I do,” sighed Rev. Rutledge. “But it’s difficult, Corrie. Every one of us has personal biases and preferences and wants and tendencies that we can’t ever escape. Laying those down, even for the sake of trying to find truth, is not an easy thing to do. I constantly try to put myself in the background so I can be on the lookout for something deeper.”

  He paused, but then went on after a moment.

  “There is another way of looking at it too, Corrie,” he said. “There are two different kinds of truth you can be looking for. Or perhaps I should say two different kinds of right and wrong.”

  “I don’t quite understand that, but I’ll keep listening,” I said.

  He laughed. “Let me see if I can explain it. I’ve only been thinking this through recently myself. First, there’s the kind of right and wro
ng that’s absolute, that’s clear in the Bible. It’s always the same, it’s the same for everybody in every situation. There’s no variation to it. Right is right and wrong is wrong. Lying is like that—it’s always wrong. Murder, stealing, hatred—those things are always wrong. And of course, in the same way there are right things too that are always right, true things that are always true. It is true that God made the world. It is true that Jesus Christ lived and died for our sins. It is true that man cannot live meaningfully apart from God. It is true that people are supposed to treat one another with kindness and love. All those things are true no matter what anyone says. If somebody says differently—that God didn’t make the world or that it’s all right to be cruel—then he would be wrong. These are the kinds of things I call ‘absolute’ truth or ‘absolute’ right and wrong. There’s no question about them.”

  “I understand all that. Then, what’s the second kind?”

  “Well, that’s the one I’ve been wrestling through in my own mind lately. I haven’t come up with a good name for it yet. It has to do with things that aren’t absolute, where the Bible doesn’t necessarily give a clear view on it, or maybe doesn’t say anything at all about it. For example, is it right for your father to be mayor of Miracle Springs?”

  “I hope so!” I said.

  “So do I. And I think it is. But do you remember how the whole thing came about? It was Almeda who got involved first, and yet in the end she decided it was the wrong thing for her to do. You see, running for mayor isn’t something you can say is right or wrong. It might be either.”