Uncle Tom's Carbine

As a rule I take a rather dim view of fictional literature. I wouldn't go so far as to say that reading fiction is inherently sinful or anything (that, for instance, would be a legitimate example of legalism) but just that it is usually a waste of time at best. I myself once was a prodigious reader of fiction – reading Prof. Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings at least once a year – and many other fictional books besides. Sometime around age 21 or 22 (about eight years before God came) I realized that a person only has just so much time on the earth, and just so many waking hours, and all the time I was devoting to reading fiction I could be actually learning something.

Unfortunately, most works of fiction – being the imaginations of sinful humans – don't really make it too far up the 'at best' scale.

Which brings us to my second objection to fiction: It is all too easy for the author to work everything out in his itty bitty imaginary world to suit his own fleshly desires without having to deal with the truths of reality. Characters can make all sorts of godless, immoral, unwise decisions and have everything just 'work out'. It's like having an imaginary argument with someone in which you trounce their every point, show them the speciousness of their position, and win the argument hands down. You make your point and leave them speechless: Huzzah! Unfortunately, when you go to argue with the actual person reality comes into play and they turn out not to be an easily manipulated figment, but a real person; they say things – and may do things – you hadn't counted on.

It just doesn't turn out quite like you had imagined.

Well that is unpleasant enough (speaking from experience), but if the person in question turns out to be, say, the All-powerful Creator of Heaven and Earth whom you have snubbed all your life, telling yourself and everyone who asks that you'll be OK and you don't really need to commit your life to His Son, and who is now infinitely offended by your willful rejection of the only possible solution for your filthy sins, which you are smeared and stained and reeking with, and realize shaking uncontrollably before His thundering blazing wrath that lays every single fact about your life absolutely naked – like that dream where you showed up for school in your underwear, only 10,000 times 10,000 times worse – that your shuckin' and jivin' just ain't gonna get it, and the jaws of Hell are now opening underneath you...

Well that is the reality of which I said that writers of fiction so easily ignore it.

One exception I have made is the reading of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

A copy of that book surfaced in our home and the kids asked permission to read it. I generally discourage the children from fiction for all the reasons above – without regard to anybody's list of so-called "classics" – but in the case of this request I gave it greater consideration specifically because I knew that Uncle Tom's Cabin was a fictional work that had an actual, real, and notable impact on history. That puts it in a rather different category. So I agreed to read it first and then let the kids, if I found no real objectionable material.

Going into the book, here is what I knew about it.
• It was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe as a work of anti-slavery propaganda, which she herself considered to have been given to her from God; that it enjoyed great popularity, and directly contributed to the coming of the American Civil War.
• When President Lincoln later met Stowe he said, "So you're the little lady who started this big war."
• Conservative blacks – such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – are often ridiculed by not so conservative blacks as 'Uncle Toms'.

I never had any particular desire to read Uncle Tom's Cabin. To me, it was just that little book written by that little woman, and I really never thought too much about it. Strangely, although we were taught in the public schools that it played an important role in the events leading up to the Civil War, it was not among the list of 'classics' that we were required to read. I certainly never saw anyone reading it in school.

Having now read it, I know why.

If you have never read Uncle Tom's Cabin, you need to.
Not one day, but today. I was completely – completely – unprepared for how moving and how powerful the book actually is. More importantly, I was completely unprepared for how unabashedly evangelical the book is: both in the sense of coming from an 'evangelical protestant' perspective, and also as being written with evangelism closely tied into the purposes of the book.

The most difficult thing about reading it is Stowe's literary impersonation of the various dialects involved in the story. This was supposedly the first major work ever to attempt such a thing, and it is at first a bit hard to understand. I wasn't sure at first if I was supposed to be attaching a British or Upper-crust Southern, or Southern White-Trash accent to it or what. Take it in stride and you will get used to it.

The other thing I didn't expect was the portrayal of Uncle Tom as a Christ-figure. Laying down his life in his service to Jesus, he definitely shares in His sufferings and 'fills up in his body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ', as Paul said. It is difficult to comment on that sufficiently without giving the story away. It should be obvious though just how offensive such a portrayal would have been to white southerners in those days, who had by then adopted the evil and unbiblical philosophy that blacks were much less than whites, even less than human. To then portray a black slave as a direct reflection of Jesus – whom they (supposedly) worshiped as deity – what an affront that would have been!

The thing that really got me though, that really puzzled me, was the wide gulf between the impression I had previously acquired about Uncle Tom, and the reality of the character.

For years I had heard blacks disparaging politically conservative blacks as 'Uncle Toms': i.e., "...you' a ol' Uncle Tom handkerchief-head!" The impression I had from years of hearing Uncle Tom referred to by both blacks and whites was one of spineless debasement, of mean and weaselly self-subjugation, of cravenly fawning over the white man and playing up to him like a dog whimpering and licking at his master's feet hoping that just a bone might be thrown to him – the very opposite of anything approaching manhood and dignity. Some sort of black-minstrel-play character shuckin' and grinnin' and playin' it up for de massa.

Not only was my impression wrong, but it was so wrong it left me confounded. I wondered how on earth anyone could possibly look at Uncle Tom that way, could possibly see in 'Uncle Tom' an insult? How could anyone remotely portray him in such a light? The actual Uncle Tom character, though perhaps intellectually stunted, was a physical and spiritual giant; a man, who, solely because of conscience toward God (1 Peter 2:19) endures undue hardship and unjust suffering. A man who, reviled, does not revile in return, but forthrightly gives the best that he has to give, as genuinely unto God. A man who takes the lonely path of Christ and looks to Him in everything he goes through, who could at many moments have struck down his captors, but prays for them instead, and yet does not shrink back from telling his masters plainly of their need for Christ and the hopelessness of their sinful condition. A man who, though betrayed, bereft, and beaten, keeps his eyes firmly fixed on eternal reality with manly determination and incredible inner strength. A man who, whether presented with white villainy or black victimism tells all about their need for Christ and exhorts all to turns from their sins and put their trust in the Cross. A whole and complete man who recognizes that a white sister-in-Christ is more his family than any black sinner. A man's man who, in true hero fashion, in steadfastness of mind, slowly gets the 'better' of his opponents in life when they come to find that he truly is their better, or are struck by God for their bitter impenitence.

Who on earth could possibly despise the Uncle Tom of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

This question had me really baffled until I realized that all the things that made Uncle Tom the hero, all the things which he had gotten from a lifetime of serving the King of Kings, all the things which were the very strengths and all our hope in Jesus, are precisely the very things that make Jesus the 'stumbling stone and the rock of offense' that was laid in Zion. The worldliness and the fleshliness of man does not want a hero that suffers with strength, and in patience lays it all before God. The natural man does not want a Messiah that allows Himself to be beaten and torn to expose our own sinfulness and our own need for redemption when with one word He could have blasted his tormentors into sub-atomic particles. The heart of man does not want a redeemer who would allow Himself to be nailed to a cross when He could be raising armies to ride in glorious battle against the unjust Roman occupiers.

The heart of man does not want an Uncle Tom's Cabin; it wants Uncle Tom's Carbine. It wants to see Uncle Tom in armed revolt, takin' one in the shoulder, but gritting his teeth and mowin' 'em down in the process. It wants to see him leading a band a grim-faced hardened stoics gettin' back at their oppressor and not caring about whether their enemy winds up in hell. We don't want a hero who looks past his own suffering to see the eternal destiny of his tormentors. We want a hero who blows 'em to hell without misgiving, gets the girl, and rides off to forge his own destiny in true movie fashion.

Coming this summer to a theater near you: Uncle Tom's Carbine!

Well... I do have some good news for those of you who can't wait to see justice meted out: In God's plan, you actually get both movies. In God's plan, in the first show, you get the safe and snuggly baby in a manger. Then, after the interlude and a chance to go to the bathroom and get you a Coke®, comes the next feature: Messiah Triumphant! Riding at the head of the Armies of Heaven He treads out the winepress of His wrath and stains all His clothes crimson with the blood that is spilled in vengeance around the world. More perilous than anything your eyes will ever behold, the Prince of Life also becomes the avenger of all injustice and unrighteousness in a way that makes a Molly Hatchet album cover look like school-girls playing cats-cradle. The Violence and Gore are so out of hand that they have to invent not just a new movie rating, but a whole new rating system, just to begin to convey the truth of the situation.

The Suffering Servant of Psalm 22 becomes the Glorious Son of David in Psalm 110, and "fills the places with dead bodies."
 
Umm, however... you might want to take a good look at the book of Malachi first, starting in chapter 2 and verse17. " 'Behold, He is coming,' say the LORD of Hosts, 'But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears?' " Do you think you can? "He will be like a refiner's fire.." He will completely melt down and burn up everything and everyone who comes before Him, including you! It's what we've always longed for, God says, but it's not going to be like you think because your sins have to be included in it too!

Uh-Oh!

This is why we have an Uncle Tom Messiah first. Uncle Tom's Carbine is still in production and will be along directly.

Meanwhile, you'd better get in line for tickets now, before they close the ticket-booth.