Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, US presidential inaugurations between 1793 and 1933 were held on March 4, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.

In October of last year I got to visit a place I’d dreamed about since I was young. I was visiting a new city on business and just like I mentioned in episode 607, I took advantage of the few hours of personal time I had available to explore the city. Once I checked into my hotel, I fired up my favorite ride sharing app and punched in an address. Within no time, a car arrived at my hotel and 20 minutes later we arrived at my destination. I thanked the driver for the lift and the great conversation, and then journeyed the remaining 500 feet on foot. There, with excitement in my gut, I fixed my gaze westward and climbed the final 58 steps that stood between me and the monument I’d come to see.

I quickly made my way to the top and what I saw upon completing my ascent did not disappoint. When he was alive the great emancipator stood 6’4”. The one sitting before me carved from Georgia marble is 19’ from foot to head. If the statue could stand, the larger than life depiction of Abraham Lincoln would be 28’ feet tall. That’s 8.5 meters in case you’re wondering.

I’ve seen countless photos and videos of the Lincoln Memorial, but seeing with my own eyes was magnificent. Many consider Lincoln to be the greatest president of all time, and it’s hard to argue otherwise. The details carved into every part of the memorial left me in awe. I felt like I was standing at the feet of greatness.

What I didn’t realize until I stood there taking it all in was that the inside walls were decorated with artwork and writings. On the southern wall is carved Lincoln’s most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

It’s easy to see why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would stand at this very spot and deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech 100 years after Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Four score and 7 years is equal to 87 years, and it’s exactly that number of steps from the top of the Lincoln Memorial to the nearby reflecting pool. Today I’ll reflect on those moments I spent standing at the feet of Lincoln.

The northern wall of the memorial is also adorned with artwork and the words of Lincoln. That wall is carved with the words he spoke on March 4, 1865, his second inauguration speech. This speech is not one that I was very familiar with, and as I stood there reading it, I was struck by themes that mirror those found in our culture today. 

Lincoln took his first oath of office on March 4, 1861 and hoped he could somehow prevent the nation from breaking out into civil war. But as he stated in that second inauguration speech, “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.” Just over a month after his first inauguration on April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began.

There standing at the US Capitol Building’s east portico on March 4, 1865, he was hopeful that the war was nearing its conclusion and the emancipation of the enslaved was imminent. Indeed, the war would conclude two and a half months later on May 26, 1865, but not before his own life would be taken on April 15. 

The war had weighed heavily on Lincoln and aged him far beyond the 4 years it lasted. Lincoln sought counsel from men and women around him, from the Bible, and through prayers to the Almighty. Those who fought against him did the same. With this in mind he penned these words which are now inscribed on that northern wall:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.

Here’s what I learned.

I’ve often heard it said that we should avoid talking about religion and politics. Frankly, I think that doing so has led us as a culture to be dangerously ignorant in both arenas. Of course, I regularly talk about religion on this podcast, but I don’t often venture into the political waters here. This episode will be no different. Yes, today’s episode certainly has some political themes to it, but that’s simply a means to an end. With that in mind, I hope you’ll stick with me to the conclusion.

As I stood there at the feet of Lincoln on that late October evening last fall, I read the words of his second inaugural address and knew immediately that they had just inspired an episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday. It’s no coincidence that I’ve chosen this day, January 20, or inauguration day, to share this story.

Politics has always been an ugly profession. Making progress in the political area often requires compromise and is fraught with division and derision. Last year I had a conversation with a close friend about the civil war. He and I don’t share a lot of the same political or religious beliefs, which makes for some very engaging conversations. 

He and I both have a hard time understanding how slavery could ever be justified, especially the chattel slavery once practiced in America. To both of us it’s incomprehensible how any human could ever treat another human that way. It seems indefensible at any level. With this in mind, he shared that he thinks that anyone who thought otherwise during that era has no upstanding ethics or morals at all. That is, if they held a positive or indifferent view of slavery, any morals or ethics they had which might be considered just, are null and void.

I disagreed. While I find it incomprehensible to understand how they could have possibly been able to justify or stand indifferent to slavery, I also understand that all of us are people of a certain time and certain place with a certain culture which influences us. In this way, even people who were otherwise full of high and noble morals were influenced by their culture which led them to being able to justify the evil that is slavery. This isn’t to let them off the hook or give them any justification for their actions, but is only a way of understanding how those views and actions could have taken place.

After all, each one of us thinks of himself to be a harbinger of high morals and ethics all while holding within us double standards, malice, hypocrisy, and all manner of evil thoughts that with the chance to have those thoughts play out unchecked or without consequence, might do things which we would otherwise condemn. Put more succinctly, there is none righteous, no, not one. 

With this in mind it’s easy for me to understand Lincoln’s description of how both sides of the war were imploring the same God to intervene on their behalf. I’m sure at least some on each side also found it difficult to understand how those who stood in opposition could call themselves followers of and devotees to the God of the Bible.

And that brings us to today.

Personally, I find myself to be a man without a party. Over the last few elections both local and nationally I’ve voted red, blue, and whatever color independents and Libertarians are. I have friends that I respect greatly who I know are genuine followers of Christ cast their vote last November for the blue candidate and others who cast it for the red candidate. 

Social media was filled with Christians and non-Christians sharing their view of why it was impossible to call yourself a Christian and still vote for the red candidate, all the while others were saying the same about those who would vote for the blue candidate. Each side, red and blue, praying to the same God and asking him to intervene on their behalf. 

I’ll talk more about this in a future episode dedicated entirely to the concept, but the United States has never been and should never be a theocracy. Some people want to make it into that. The problem with this idea is it will never work as they envision. It would end up creating a government where man rules in the name of God rather than one where God actually rules. 

Other people don’t want that, but also go so far to accuse people of being false Christians if they don’t want the government to act with all the compassion and moral obligation that Christians and the church are called to within the pages of the New Testament. 

Too easily we allow ourselves to be boxed in, herded, separated into tribes, and labeled. No, that’s not right. Too easily we allow ourselves to look upon others, box them in, herd them, separate them into tribes, and label them. Those people are not like us. They are morally inferior, ignorant, a threat to our way of life, and therefore, our enemy. We refuse to share meals with them, remain connected with them even on social media, or even share the same social media platform as them. 

Let’s take a deep breath, look at ourselves in the mirror, put down the stones we all too easily cast at others, and recognize that we are all humans. To paraphrase Cliff Knectle, you’ve got your preferences and I’ve got mine. But each one of us is a precious human being created in the image of God, which means each one of us has dignity, value, and significance. Tolerance is respecting a person enough to listen to understand what they believe. Tolerance is you and I disagree, yet I still respect you because I’m convinced you’re not just a hunk of primordial slime evolved to our order.  You’re a human being created in the image of God and God created me to respect you, not to disrespect you. Tolerance loving your enemy which is exactly what Jesus taught and modeled.

Lincoln said it this way in that second inaugural address:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Let’s show genuine love and tolerance. Let’s seek to lean into conversations rather than avoid them, and in doing so find understanding, common ground, and healing. Let’s choose to demonstrate kindness, compassion, patience, and generosity. Let’s build up rather than tear down. If we do, I believe America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.

I want you to be a part of the next Monday Mailbag on March 31st! Monday Mailbag is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU.  It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long.  It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others.  You can send in questions or responses to my SILY episodes, and I’ll respond to them via Monday Mailbag episodes. You can send in questions or responses to my SILY episodes, and I’ll respond to them via Monday Mailbag episodes. You can participate in Monday Mailbags by visiting the Golden Spiral Media listener feedback page.