Booker T. Washington put it rightly when addressing a black group in session at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery many years ago: "We must learn more and more to draw the line between the good and bad; between pure and impure. Let the line be drawn strictly, no matter who is ostracized or does not like it. We must place a stamp of reward upon right living and a stamp of condemnation upon wrong living."5
To follow any other line is folly and tragic failure; it is, as Jesus dramatically cautioned us against doing, to build the house of one's life in an unstable and unsafe sandy place.
IV
Jesus came to save us from our sins but we must let Him do so. Sin deteriorates relations, undermines health, dulls the mind, misdirects energies, destroys community, ruins character. Jesus came to save us, setting us free to become what God's grace can make us. John Mbiti was right in saying that "The Christian faith coheres in the one concept of the Saviorhood of Christ." As this truth is proclaimed, the power of the gospel becomes known and experienced.
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The story is told about Sojourner Truth's first visit with President Lincoln. Upon meeting him, that gallant black woman said, "I never heard of you before you were talked of for President." Mr. Lincoln smiled, we are told, and replied that he had long since heard of her work.
As they talked on together, Sojourner Truth complimented Mr. Lincoln on being the best president the country had ever had. Mr. Lincoln humbly suggested that several presidents of the nation had done better than himself. Sojourner Truth shrugged her shoulders at that, saying, "They may have been good to others, but they neglected to do anything for my race. George Washington had a good name, but his name didn't reach to us."6
Jesus. This is a name that reaches us, all of us, ready to touch and save us. But we must let Him.
Notes
1. See Rackham Holt, George Washington Carver: An American Biography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1963 revised edition), p. 268.
2. See Harvey Jay Hill, He Heard Cod's Whisper: The Story of Dr. George W. Carver (Minneapolis: Jorgenson Press, 1943), p. 73.
3. Ibid., p. 74.
4. Ibid., p. 74.
5. "An Address at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church" on May 19, 1901, in The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 6, 1901-02, ed. by Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock, with Barbara S. Kraft (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), p. 116.
6. See Jacqueline Bernard, Journey Toward Freedom: The Story of Soiourner Truth (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1967), p. 202.