By Debra Rae
Ah, the innocence of youth. When good men seem really, really good; and bad men seem really, really bad. Folks are heroes or villains—nothing more; nothing less. While it’s true that “black” and “white” exist, so do varying shades of “gray.” As we mature, we learn well that even the best men and women among us are flawed, some seriously.
Take, for example, King David, Israel’s greatest and most beloved king. An ancestor of Jesus and a man after God’s own heart, David was honored for expanding the kingdom, for his bravery, and for his faithfulness in friendship. This is the same David who took for himself another man’s wife and, then, used his kingly clout to wipe out the competition.
Old and New Testaments alike are replete with similar examples. The most prominent of the twelve apostles, Peter denied His Lord, yet became an outstanding leader of the early church and, in the end, died a courageous martyr.
Despite grievous shortcomings, mercy and grace overtake the repentant—sometimes through the godless. For instance, Cyrus the Mede gave rise to the renowned Persian Empire and, as such, exercised policies of moderation that naturally extended to the Hebrews. For his enabling their return to Judea to rebuild the Temple, Scripture calls even this heathen king an “anointed one.”
America’s Founding Fathers
Bible personalities are not alone in failure. Christian J. Pinto gives compelling evidence that not every founding father of our great nation was what history portrays him to be. While Pinto’s exposé of Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings paints Thomas Paine, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin in less than favorable light, God nonetheless used them to establish a nation with indisputably Christian underpinnings.
Thomas Paine
To his credit, Revolutionary writer Thomas Paine was said to have “stirred the American colonies to independence.” William J. Federer quotes Paine as resigning to the will of his Creator God. However, in The Age of Reason, Paine proclaimed his own mind to be his church; he believed in no creed of the Protestant church, or any church he knew of. According to leading historian Dr. James H. Billington, Paine lived immorally in a ménage a trois with [Nicholas] Bonneville and his wife (1797-1802). Though Federer suggests that Paine repented of publishing the Age of Reason, other historians concur that, even when dying, Paine flatly denied Christ and refused personal salvation, when offered.
John Adams
And then there’s John Adams, a Unitarian Universalist. His wife, Abigail, espoused the teachings of her father who likewise rejected the doctrine of original sin, as well as the full divinity of Christ. Both John and Abigail emphasized reason and morality in religious life. Federer quotes Adams’ last words as “Thank God, Jefferson lives!” Curious words, for a dying Christian. In The American Leadership Tradition, the foreword for which was written by Charles Colson, Marvin Olasky portrays slave-owner Thomas Jefferson as “an infidel” and “a shameless philanderer.”
To be continued
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