Heritage of Hate

If you have been in the South for any length of time you have undoubtedly seen the Confederate Flag bumper sticker reading, "Heritage Not Hate." One comes to expect such sights – particularly in the deep south – and not unusually it turns out that the collar of the persons driving vehicles so adorned tends to be a bit ruddier than average. But I may say that I have not yet come to expect one of these "Heritage Not Hate" stickers in the company of a "Real Men Love Jesus" decal. My sons and I were met with such a sight quite recently.

This may seem unremarkable to many throughout the South – where 'Southern Pride' and 'church'-going are both traditional – but it did seem remarkable to us because the two messages are so incongruous.

In what sense are these two slogans incongruous?

People, when you see that rebel flag on those "Heritage Not Hate" bumper stickers, the heritage in question is hate.

Sorry, I know that can be a shock to many of the persons reading this from below the Mason-Dixon line, but that rebel-flag heritage is hate. That's what it's all about.

As a son of the South I know whereof I speak. I was raised in a family that took its 'southern-ness' seriously. I remember once seeing an old black-and-white movie set in the reconstruction period. In one scene the heroine of the movie stated, "I was 10 years old before I found out that 'damn' and 'yankee' were two different words." That was pretty much what our family was like. No one would have said, "damn" in our house, but the intention was just the same. Imagine my surprise when I made friends with a new kid in high school from New York and found out that he was not rude and incredibly stupid!

I grew up loving that hateful battle flag and actually believing that the South didn't fight the war over slavery. I hate to have to tell you this, but slavery was the whole point of the Civil War from two generations before secession even happened. The South and the rest of the colonies knew that slavery was wrong from before the Revolution. But the more time went on, the more she dragged her heels, and then the more she dug in her heels. In response to God stirring the national conscience against American Slavery, the South developed a philosophy espousing the 'rightness' of their wrong. They twisted and perverted the truths of the Bible to justify their hatred and evil domination. As the truth marched on, the 'churches' of the South broke ties with their brothers in the North rather than release their grip on the slaves (which is where the Southern Baptist Convention came from for one), and dug their heels in and refused to listen to God, the Bible, men, or Conscience.

(Not all of the South was like-minded though; throughout the mountains opinions tended strongly against secession and slavery, which is why a small mountain county in North Georgia changed its name to Union County in protest against secession, just as the western counties of Virginia seceded from secessionist Virginia to rejoin the Union as West Virginia, and why slaveholding Kentucky refused to secede and fought with the Union.)

God patiently gave the South every reasonable and beyond reasonable opportunity to do the right thing and remove that great evil from her midst, until their was no way possible and all chances were at an end. Jefferson himself said, "I tremble for my country, knowing that God is a just God, and that His Justice cannot sleep forever." And when God's justice could sleep no longer He blasted the South to pieces with such utter destruction that slavery would never again be considered, until the blood of all the brutalized and murdered slaves had been exacted against the perpetrators of the crime, and they were humbled in deep misery and humiliation and bitterness of soul.

Never again would a human slave be owned in the South, or in America – but instead of repentance toward God and the peaceful fruit of righteousness, she turned again to bitter hatred and oppression of our black brothers and sisters and did all she could to hate them within and without legal power. Instead of humbling ourselves before God and repenting for our sins and the sins of our fathers, we dug in our heels and determined to hate them as far as we possibly still could be allowed.

That tom-fool flag is the very symbol of that hatred, that rebellion against God, that refusal to humble ourselves before God and the world and to repent of our wickedness. With hatred in our hearts we set our faces against all godliness and the southern states again flew the Confederate Flag in defiance of God and of all decent men everywhere who saw the injustice of the segregationist South, and with the fires of hell in our eyes we dared anyone to come and take our hatred out from between our clenched teeth.

Men and women of God throughout the South, all who name the name of Christ, we have great need still of repentance toward God for the evils of our heritage! Our heritage concerning that wicked rebel flag is not a heritage to be proud of and hold on to, it is a Heritage of Hate.