If keeping a vow meant you would have to sin, would you keep it? Why or why not? How can this passage help you to keep your vows in perspective? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, P.379).
(From
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 31):
So
I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set
down and wrote:
Miss
Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville
and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if
you send. HUCK FINN
I
felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever
felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it
straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking-
thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to
being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to
thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all
the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight,
sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and
laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden
me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my
watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on
sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the
fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the
feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and
pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he
always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the
men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was
the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's
got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.
It
was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a
trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things,
and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and
then says to myself:
"All
right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.
It
was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let
them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved
the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness
again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other
warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of
slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do
that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as
well go the whole hog.
(Source)
One
of my all-time favorite passages in American literature occurs when
Huckleberry Finn struggles with his conscience—when he must act
based on a decision to conform to the laws, expectations, customs,
and mores of his enveloping society or whether to act in the best
interest of his slave friend, Jim. It is a weighty matter to spurn
the panoply of power represented by the prevailing culture; one is
surely arrogant to discount the beliefs, opinions, and convictions of
so many. But even so, there yet remains a quiet and simple
conviction residing somewhere deep within the heart of man that one
should respect the inner voice sometimes strikingly at odds with
culture.
In
some ways I lately can identity with Huck Finn. I am a Christian and
have heard many times that Christ is the only way. If you don't
believe in Christ, you will go to hell. He is the only path up the
mountain to God and salvation. Christianity is thus seen as tightly
exclusionary and highly legalistic. This seems to belie the Lord's
prayer with its emphasis on the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of man.
Many
Christians view Islam as especially suspect. One cannot gainsay the
fact that Muslims do not view Christ as the Son of God.
Nevertheless, to better appreciate their beliefs and to become
acquainted with believers on a personal basis, I have been attending
Friday mosque services. Once during lunch following a service, a
believer said that I was really a Muslim at heart. I found this
comment remarkable, for privately I had been thinking—after
witnessing their many loving kindnesses—that they were really
Christians at heart—consistently behaving in accord with the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
The
opening question that I quoted preceding today's blog raises an
important and longstanding distinction between the will of God and
the will of man. Those faithful to God have not infrequently found
themselves at odds with the society or state that they find
themselves in. It is my firm belief that in the end we are to obey
God rather than man. Such a view has always put man in a perilous
position. We never can take the laws, opinions, and convictions of a
society lightly. They are established by experience, tradition, and
belief. Decision points where there is conflict between societal
mores and individual conscience are hazardous. This is sometimes
shown when horrible things are commited in the name of God. That is
why in these moments of decision, we often find ourselves in an
uneasy twilight zone—in an area fraught with hazards and
vulnerabilities.
But
thankfully many societies have incorporated in their systems room for
the “conscientious objector.” That is (not just in terms of
military service) there are attempts to allow leeway for the exercise
of conscience even when that runs counter to culture. This does not
mean that opposition to prevailing views is cost-free. Sometimes the
price is very high. Nevertheless, society puts on record that it
declines to put itself in the place of God. The state despite all its
power and magnificence, retains humility before the sometimes
confounding inner voice of conscience. Let us be thankful for such
accommodation, and for the likes of Huckleberry Finn.
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