You are no different

       One of the great learnings a person can become aware of is the truth that you are no different than the person next to you.  A phrase once said was “There but by the grace of God go I”.  In this statement, we acknowledge that we would be in the same situation as that person if things happened differently for us.  It’s a humbling realization. 

      Today many people sneer at people of the past and call people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson evil because they owned slaves. Their beliefs emanate from a view that if they had lived back then they would do things differently.  

     How wrong they are.  

     We often don’t take into account how so much of who we are is handed down by the culture and environment around us.   We like to think we arrived at our trajectory on our own power and they only thing influencing us is our own DNA.  

    As an illustration, consider the modern day “alligator fish” (also known as “gar”). This fish is often referred to as a living fossil as its appearance hasn’t changed in 100s of millions of years.  Fossils we find today have the exact same bone structure and teeth.  There is one glaring difference however.  The modern day Gar is freshwater and the prehistoric is saltwater. Over the Millenia this fish as changed its ability to live in freshwater and become incapable of swimming in saltwater without dying.  Same fish but different habitat.   Humans are much like the Gar.  We may look the same as people in other centuries but we swim in much different waters 

     Many modern day “period pieces” (movies and TV) try to inject 21st century views and thinking into the 18th and 19th centuries to make you think these people living at that time were just like you and I living today.  One such PBS program called “Bridgerton”.  The series centers around the main character , Daphne Bidgerton, whose views (and even language) could be pulled from a modern day teen romance novel. Her character is purported to be living in England in the early 1800s and is fighting for “social justice” and upsetting the aristocratic system. This mixing of eras gives the wrong impression to the people viewing it that we find the people living at this time no different from us other than the need to wear long dresses , top hats and ride in horse drawn carriages. This could not be further from the truth.  

    The truth is, if time travel was made possible we would need a lot more than a change of cloths to fit in.  We would need a whole change of views , values and also language.  Once I was visiting the Pittock Mansion in Portland Oregon and saw some old newspapers mounted on the wall in glass (Pittock was the owner of the local newspaper).  I went up to the paper to read and see what issues they were concerned with in their time.  To my amazement I could barely read the article as the language and choice of words was far different from why I was used to reading.  I would need several hours and a Thesaurus to decode what many of that time could read without any trouble.  This is just one of many differences I would have to overcome in going back to this time.  

      Every culture from every time is like this.  They are who they are because of when they lived. Take for example those living in the bronze era.  City states attacked other city states on a regular basis to obtain their wealth.  There was no “Free Trade Agreement Acts” to protect them.  The only protection were bigger walls and better swords and spears.  When crops failed from no rain or from pestilence the people of their day did not have weather forecasts to give them hope or people to show them how to better rotate their crops.  Instead they had people who scared them into sacrificing their children or offering up their young girls as prostitutes for Baal worship.  To think that you would grow up in this culture, (illiterate and uneducated) and would act completely different is the height of hubris.  You would be no different than them and only by the grace of God are you saved from that type of life. 

     We need to show grace , not only to those living around us now , but also to those living in the past (maybe even more for those living in the past as they cannot speak for themselves).  We need to say to ourselves as we read about history that we would be very much like them.  

     This not too say you would not be any different.  After all,  you are still you.  The issue is the degree of difference.  Each generation has men and women who do think differently than their culture dictates but only by a few degrees of difference.  But like compounding interest from a bank these few differences over time multiplies over each generation.  

     For example, Thomas Jefferson put aside the idea of an aristocracy (blue bloods verse commoners) when he penned his infamous words “We believe all men are created equal”.  (even though he owned slaves). Lincoln would later use these words in his infamous Gettysburg address to include men of all races (even though he like many felt at one time blacks would not be able to live among whites).  Martin Luther King would build on these changes to end racial hatred still lingering from the civil war and to bring us together in love for one another  (even though he known to have been unfaithful in love to his wife). 

   So as you read about historical figures or people of different eras, remember that these people  , like you, are imperfect and a product of their time and world.  Thank them for how they were able to make the changes they did.