The Founding Fathers

Aaron Burr was the grandson of the famous Calvinist theologian Jonathan Edwards.  That he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel was not the only trouble he caused in his lifetime.  It seems he stirred up a lot of people and caused a lot of problems.  Still, he appears to have been a genuine war hero earlier in his life.  John Adams seemed to be the most morally upright of the founding fathers, but was argumentative and had an abrasive personality.  Benedict Arnold was a traitor, had been a courageous leader and appeared to have been very much under appreciated by George Washington.  We enjoy our read through A Patriot’s History of the United States every afternoon.

Yesterday during a pause in the reading, Kelly noted how the founding fathers were just regular people. We read that Jefferson went against one of his strongly held principles about what government had the right to do when he made the Louisiana purchase. John Adams, George Washington, and others made similar compromises over the course of their public lives. My thought in reading this was that I have wrongly (and rightly) compromised my own principles, too.  The circumstances surrounding the decisions we make have a huge impact on how we are judged by history.  How would Benedict Arnold now be judged if England had won the Revolutionary War?  How would he be judged if Washington had showed him a little more respect?  How would Aaron Burr’s life had been different if he had chosen to shoot wide of the mark.  So many small decisions we make have what seems to be an inordinate amount of impact on the direction of our lives.

My first thought was that I want to be very careful about even the small things.  My second thought was that I need to show more kindness to those who make spur of the moment decisions that have deleterious consequences on their entire lives.  All this makes the noise and posturing of the rich and powerful to assure a favorable historical legacy ring hollow.  Our read through this book has made me more grateful that our judge is a merciful and omniscient God.