Hatfields and McCoys

                                                                                                                                   Roger’s Life-blog

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 
(1 Peter 4:8-11 ESV)

Old Ran'l McCoy

Wednesday afternoon 5/30/12... 

"Devil Anse" Hatfield

The Hatfields and McCoys

Starting Memorial Day, the History Channel aired a 3-part Docudrama about the famous feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families that ran from 1880 to 1891. The decade long shooting war resulted in the deaths of a dozen members of the two families. While the feud didn’t really flame up until after a trial over a pig the McCoys accused the Hatfields of stealing, there were ill feelings between the two patriarchs of the family that could be traced back to the Civil War. Harmon McCoy fought on the side of the Union while most of his family and all the Hatfields fought for the Confederacy. When he was murdered, the Hatfields were immediately suspected, though no one was ever brought to justice for the crime. This movie apparently stimulated great interest in many people, because the New York Post reports that the Monday night debut “attracted a monster audience Monday night, 13.9 million viewers, the second largest for a cable program that did not involve sports.” I was no exception, and even missed a Rangers game to view the first two episodes.

            I find history fascinating and this story is right up my alley. And, like my “take” on most of history, I saw deep theological implications in this feud that I want to share in this article—though doing so may possibly fan to flames another feud of epic proportions among folks whose names are neither Hatfield nor McCoy.

            Unfortunately, I see in these feuding people, the same kind of tribalistic potential for violence that I see in some folk who claim to be Christian. The pattern seems to focus mostly around tightly grasped theological traditions handed down from generation to generation. Although, in some cases these traditions have become nothing more than unwritten creeds, they are apparently worth taking a spiritual life to defend.

            Some groups have a great affinity for unwritten creeds – as if to say that unwritten creeds permit a kind of plausible deniability to the existence of any systematic delineation of beliefs at all. One unwritten credo, is “No creed but the Bible.” It is honorable in its expression and was honorable when the first men spoke it in the early days of the American Restoration Movement. Unfortunately, today it has most often come to mean “No creed but (my interpretation of) the Bible!” Result: formula for a feud!

            Another tenet of the unwritten Restoration creed is “We will speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where it is silent.” The battle lines for this creed are drawn between the understanding of silence: is silence permissive or is it prohibitive. When God doesn’t mention something in his word does that mean we do not have authority for it, or it is irrelevant and permitted?  Again, unfortunately the answer to that question is determined by (a) what we happen to be talking about at the time and (b) what we want it to mean. Consider the feud about fellowship halls (or family-life centers, kitchens, gymnasiums, coffee shops, etc.) in church. One group says they are not mentioned, therefore they must be unauthorized and to build one is to introduce “strange fire”. The other group agrees they are not mentioned, but draws the opposite conclusion:  they must be therefore permitted. Oddly enough, most of those who object to playing basketball in a church-owned building, eating a meal in a fellow-ship hall, would be the first to complain of a building without an indoor toilet. Result: formula for a feud!

            Not long ago, an incensed brother who had found great fault in the sermon I had just delivered approached me after services. He took extreme exception to the fact that my congregation had found a way to cooperate with some other Christians who were not of our faith heritage and didn’t believe the same as we did about certain worship practices. When I mentioned that we all served and worshipped the same Jesus, his objections became loud and belligerent. “They absolutely are NOT Christians” he said. I replied that I found that pretty odd, because they THOUGHT they were, they WORSHIPPED Jesus as Sovereign Lord, they claimed to be his disciples. His conclusion was that a person could NOT be a Christian unless they believed – in EVERY way – the way he did. Result: formula for a feud!

            Our text cited above, written by Peter makes clear the message that above all, we are to keep on loving one another; show hospitality to one another; use our gifts to serve one another; with the stated intended purpose: to bring God the glory through Jesus Christ in all that we do or say.

            May God forgive us when we approach our Christianity like the feuding Hatfield and McCoy families of the 1800s! May God forgive me personally – and I believe he has -- for that is EXACTLY the way I once approached my Christian walk! We do not look like Jesus when we are feuding, fighting, labeling, dividing, and accusing. We never look more like Jesus than we reach out to help and heal the hurting. Jesus did NOT die for a feuding model of discipleship – his model was a model of inclusivity not exclusivity.

            Isn’t it time we got it right?

       

                                                               I love you!     Roger

Tuesday afternoon--May 2, 2012 ...

This afternoon I was sorting through a plastic box filled with documents that are almost 100 years old. Many of the documents are letters written to each other, by my great aunt and uncle between 1917 and the closing days of World War I in 1919. The earliest of the letters were written before they married; the last ones after he had been drafted into the army and was training at Fort Travis in San Antonio. In the box there are also a few old photographs, draft documents, military manuals, picture postcards and other assorted pieces of literature that were important to them in their day.  I have undertaken the task of organizing, indexing and digitizing these documents. I am convinced they must be preserved for history, and hopefully will find their way into a museum someday.

     My aunt and uncle had no children, but were very fond of nieces and nephews; my father – one of those nephews-- lost his dad to a drunk driver in 1941, and was especially close to them. They helped care for him when he was in his early teens; he and my mother took care of them through their final years. 

     These letters are their love letters. They are also filled with historical references including frequent mention of the influenza. History records the seriousness of the influenza outbreak during that time period.

“The pandemic lasted from January 1918 to December 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. Between 50 and 130 million died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. Even using the lower estimate of 50 million people, 3% of the world's population (which was 1.86 billion at the time) died of the disease. Some 500 million, or 27% were infected.”[i]

            It is interesting to see how obviously concerned this young rural couple was about what was going on in their world. There is almost a sense of panic as each letter mentions this person or that one who has come down with influenza. These letters give a unique, personal perspective on this terrible outbreak and at the same time, provide some insight into farm life in the Fort Spunky area of Somervell and Hood Counties in that period. At the same time one can learn about life in a wartime Army training camp and what it was like to be a young farming couple trying to start life together in those days.

            Since they are both gone now, I have debated long and hard with myself about what to do with these letters. Each letter represents a vital and interesting part of a very personal and intimate story that began about 100 years ago and lasted until the 1980s. Should I keep them in the box and let them waste away? Should I destroy them – keeping their secrets silent forever?

            Looking at the pile of letters and documents in the box I visualized what they would be in just a few more short years. I sense that if I just give the box a good shaking, it will turn all those letters into tiny fragments of confetti that would be forever unidentifiable as letters. They are just that fragile and are not far from that now. What stories would be lost if that were to happen! What a shame it would be for me to not share these little vignettes into history and help my generation and the next to perhaps understand a little better our rural Texas roots.

            I also thought of all the other untold stories, about lives lived and lost; simple little love stories that meant little to the history of the world but meant the world to those lost to history. Tombstones in every cemetery mark the graves of people who lived their very own individual story. Most of those stories are told for a generation, perhaps passed to a second, and then for the most part, lost for all of time or reduced to nothing more than dates on a tombstone.

            In the case of my great aunt and uncle, I have the opportunity to preserve some of those stories. I do not know whether I should view this as an obligation, a privilege or just an opportunity? It feels a bit intrusive, nosy and meddlesome, and I suppose it would be if they were still alive or had children or grandchildren surviving them.

            If then the psalmist was right--that we spend our years as a tale that is told --are we the better or the worse for the telling? Therein lies the dilemma. If my great aunt and uncle were alive today I know they would want the story to remain private between them. Yet, if they could speak now, from where they are, I wonder if they wouldn't say to me "tell our story! Tell how we lived, how we loved, what was important to us and what was going on in our time." I wonder.

            All these questions also make me reflect on what it would be like to ask Biblical characters about their legacies—about their stories? What if we asked Rahab about hers? Would she be shy about sharing it? I believe she would likely tell us that she was an ordinary woman introduced into an extraordinary set of circumstances by the mighty providence of God; that it was by HIS hand she was able to save her family. When confronted by her place in Biblical history, she would likely be amazed at how large a place her small story occupied in the telling of it all.

            What of Joseph? He knew how important he was to his family in his age, but did he really understand his important place in history? Did he understand his importance in the preservation of the Messianic line?

            Did Andrew really appreciate the eternal effect his bringing his brother Peter to Jesus would have on all of history?

            And like the question posed by Mark Lowry's beautiful song, "Mary, did you know...?"

            Then I MUST ask, "What of MY story?" Will it be told? Will it be WORTH telling? Or will it fall into obscurity, lost to all but the heavenly host throughout all eternity? Will it disappear into an ancient pile of 100-year-old confetti with just a rattle or two of a plastic box? Will it be nothing more than two dates on a brass plaque in a Columbarium somewhere?

            The true story – the true legacy is found in the spiritual DNA we are able to pass on to those who come after us; to those whose life is changed somehow for the good by the life we ourselves live. Our story will be told by the generations that know Jesus because of what we have done, or by the generations who will never know Jesus because of what we failed to do—and we may never be mentioned by name!

            I think perhaps Judgment Day can be summed up in just one question: “What is your story?”

                                                                                                I love you!     Roger

---

[i] 1918 Flu Pandemic - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic