Thomas Jefferson gave us the words that articulated the deepest hopes and highest aspirations that ignited the American Revolution. They are carved indelibly into the soul of this nation even as they are carved into the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.“

We’ve not yet lived up to his words, but they continue to inspire, unsettle, and challenge us as we stumble toward the light he lifted before us.

Jefferson also gave us words that name the dark shadow that haunts the soul of our nation. They, too, are caved into the Memorial’s walls.

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.”

We can’t hide the dark truth, though some of our leaders are working relentlessly to do it. Jefferson was a slave-holder. He conceived six children with Sally Hemings while she was between 14 and 16 years old and he was in his 40s. Jefferson participated in and benefitted from slavery.

But Jefferson knew better.

His original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a strong section opposing what he called the “execrable commerce” and “assemblage of horrors” of the slave trade. For the record, here are his words that were deleted from the Declaratioon by the Second Continental Congress.

He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.  This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain.  Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce.  And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Years later, Jefferson’s Ordinance of 1784 would have prohibited slavery in the territories, but it was defeated by one vote. Jefferson grieved:

“The voice of a single individual … would have prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the new country. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on the tongue of one man, & heaven was silent in that awful moment!”

I was typing Jefferson’s words when the headlines popped up my screen: “Republican leaders were able to muscle through deep internal rifts, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie breaking vote.” The big, bad, extravagantly expensive, wildly unpopular bill which passed by one vote in the House, passed by one vote in the Senate. It returned to the House where it barely passed by four votes.

So, on the day I celebrate Jefferson’s words that gave us birth, I also grieve with him.

…When massive amounts of wealth are shifted to major corporations and the wealthiest Americans by slashing funds for education, basic health care, and food assistance for underprivileged people …
…When gigantic increases are directed to building a border wall and funding deportations with little or no due process…
…When over $3 trillion will be added to the national debt…
…When the President and Governor of Florida celebrate opening a inhumane concentration camp that could result in an ecological disaster in the Everglades…
…When a nation that was once proud of its global generosity takes food from hungry people by destroying USAID, “the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children” (Bill Gates)…
…When Congress and the Supreme Court continue to surrender their Constitutional authority to an autocratic President…
…and when the American people allow all this to happen by their complicit support or their compliant silence…

With Jefferson, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.“

I’m not sure how people can say they believe the Bible but miss the “self-evident” truth in both the Old and New Testaments: God’s justice is defined by the way our resources are shared between those who have more than they need and those who need more than they have. It’s not a matter of charity; it’s a matter of justice. Jesus could not have made it clearer in his final parable. At the final judgement, the “nations” are separated on the basis of what they did with what they had.(Matthew 25:31-46)

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’

We live in the tension between what we affirm and what we do, what we hope and what we have, who we have been and who we can become. With divine justice we are held in the balance of the grace and the judgement of God. And yet…

In a letter to John Adams on September 12, 1821, Jefferson wrote:

“I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance… the flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776 have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism. On the contrary they will consume those engines, and all who work them.“

Thank you, Mr. Jefferson! May God help us to live into the vision you placed before us. May God continue to bless America.

Grace and peace,

Jim

P.S. For you patriotic reading:
Jefferson Himself: The Personal Narrative of a Many-Sided American, Edited by Bernard Mayo
Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson, Edwin S. Gaustad
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, Jon Meacham
The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, Jon Meacham