'Honest Abe's' Last Words were whispered to his wife from the presidential box at Ford's Theatre as they were dreaming about their post-war world travels:
"We will visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footsteps of the Savior. There is no place I so much desire to see as Jerusalem."
That's when his assassin's gunshot and Mary's screams shattered the night.
Lincoln hadn't always desired to see Jerusalem. About 30 years before he spoke his Final Words, Lincoln wrote a series of essays called, "The Little Book on Infidelity." He was well-known around his town of New Salem, Illinois, as an Infidel, having been uninspired by most of the 'so-called' Christianity around him.
The booklet was heavily inspired by founding father, Thomas Paine, and Scottish poet, Robert Burns, both of whom were also well-known as Infidels. Their conclusions read out like bad book reviews of the Bible:
"What tyrant ever rendered children responsible for the faults of their fathers! What man can answer for another's actions: Is not this subversive of every idea of justice and reason?"
"The virgin birth is little more than the story of a woman being debauched by a ghost and is blasphemously obscene."
"[Christianity] is the subject of what is called redemption by the death of the Son of God...it makes God Almighty act like a passionate man who killed His Son when He could not revenge Himself in any other way."
Even I have sometimes sat with the thought that Jesus' sacrifice looked a lot like suicide.
Lincoln was known to have referred to Jesus as a 'bastard' and thought that the Bible was nothing more than a book of contractions. The Little Book on Infidelity sought to expose these inconsistencies and discredit the deity of Christ. When he finished writing it, he read it out to his friend, Samuel Hill, and told him that he Intended to have it published.
Sam was shook. He snatched the book out of Lincoln's hands and immediately threw it into his tin-plate stove, burning the book to Ashes, so the Story goes.
So what happened during those thirty years that caused Lincoln to so drastically change his View of Jesus?
Well for starters, he got to know Death pretty well. His favorite poem was one titled "Mortality" by William Knox, and on the 3-year death anniversary of a woman he once loved, he wrote a poem of his own called "The Suicide's Soliloquy." It doesn't get much Darker than that.
Death held such power for him because he wholeheartedly believed that there was nothing after Death. When asked if he really believed that there wasn't any future state, he replied, "I'm afraid there isn't. It isn't a pleasant thing to think that when we die that is the last of us." Death had taken his younger brother, his mother, his sister, and that woman he once loved. If these losses hadn't yet broken him, surely the death of his son, 11-year old Willie, would do the trick.
During one of his worst depressive states, he was given a Bible by a woman named Lucy Speed with the promise that it would comfort his 'Stormy Soul'.
He politely accepted the gift and told Lucy that he would read it eventually, stating, "I doubt not that it is really, as you say, the best cure for the 'Blues' could one but Take it according to Truth."
Take it. As in, reach out your Hand and grab it.
One definition of Truth reads, "in accordance with Fact or reality," with reality being defined as, "the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them."
Well, our Hidden Kingdom surely doesn't sound True now, does it? It seems quite fairy tale-ish, in Fact.
This morning I pulled out an old hoodie I've kept around since high school. It's the color of my Dad's eyes and splattered with paint. Before pulling it over my congested head (hello, Spring), I ran my fingers across the cracked vinyl lettering on the back:
"Fairy Tales are more than True; not because they tell us that Dragons exist, but because they tell us that Dragons can be beaten. - G.K. Chesterton"
(Side note: The reason the hoodie is covered with paint is because when I received it my sophomore year of Drama Club, I thought the quote was stupid, so it was an obvious choice to wear while painting the set of Grease).
It seems to be in line with this Upside-Down Kingdom idea, then, that Truth is not so much the state of things as they actually are, which seems pretty Dark at times, but rather - Truth is held in 'the state of things as they could exist.' In other words, Truth is held in the opportunities to bring Light.
In a Gospel account written by an Apostle named John, Jesus boldly stated that He, Himself, is the Truth. He is the Light that allows us to See the inVisible Kingdom - to See our world not as it is, but as it could be. He shows us the Way to Life.
I think Lincoln at some point realized that in the Upside-Down Kingdom of Heaven, the grim Reality of Death was met with the Possibility of Life. And one simply had to take it for Truth.
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