As you surely know—especially if you had the day off work!—this past Monday was a federal holiday, Martin Luther King Jr Day. In a few weeks on February 15, we’ll get another day off for Presidents Day, as it’s been known since 1971.
How will you celebrate Presidents Day? Take a few minutes and see how many presidents you could name? Remember a select few that mean a great deal to you? Probably not.
The holiday wasn’t always so generic.
A Birthday Celebration!
Originally, February 22 was set aside as a holiday to honor George Washington, the nation’s first and highly respected president. Originally, in 1800, the year after President Washington died, his birthday was set aside unofficially as a perennial day of remembrance. Finally, in 1879 President Rutherford B. Hayes signed into law the establishment of February 22—Washington’s Birthday—a federal holiday. Initially, the law applied only to the nation’s capital, but in 1885, it was expanded to cover all the states.
In addition, some states including Illinois, set aside February 12 as a state holiday in honor of President Abraham Lincoln.
It never was a federal holiday, but I never knew it. As a child growing up in Ohio, I remember celebrating both holidays—Washington’s and Lincoln’s Birthdays.
Change of Focus
Well, everything got truncated in the late 60s. A senator from Illinois pushed for the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Monday celebration of nearly all major federal holidays. According to an article on history.com,
The proposed change was seen by many as a novel way to create more three-day weekends for the nation’s workers, and it was believed that ensuring holidays always fell on the same weekday would reduce employee absenteeism. While some argued that shifting holidays from their original dates would cheapen their meaning, the bill also had widespread support from both the private sector and labor unions and was seen as a surefire way to bolster retail sales.
The Uniform Monday Holiday Act also included a provision to combine the celebration of Washington’s birthday with that of Abraham Lincoln, which fell on February 12. Lincoln’s Birthday had long been a state holiday in places like Illinois, and many supported joining the two days as a way of giving equal recognition to two of America’s most famous statesmen.
Did you notice the reason some objected: “…shifting holidays from their original dates would cheapen their meaning.” The measure passed in 1968 and took effect in 1971—fifty years ago. So think about it. For the majority of Americans, hasn’t the objection proved true? Seems only logical, in my opinion. Again, honestly, how will you celebrate Presidents Day next month? Shift the focus of the “holiday” away from the cause for celebration to the convenience and leisure of the worker, as well as the profit of retailers, and the meaning of the holiday gets lost eventually.
Anyway, getting back to Presidents Day. It’s now supposed to be a day to celebrate all U.S. presidents. Of course, simply looking at the historical record and taking political party bias out of the equation, some are more worthy of celebrating than others. Think Richard Nixon vs. Ronald Reagan, to name a couple who served since the establishment of the holiday.
And if you listen to some of the anarchists who rose up last summer, even the presidents heretofore extolled almost universally are unworthy of a so much as a statue. Washington owned slaves…Lincoln didn’t do enough for them…Grant, either…and Teddy Roosevelt did the native Americans wrong. And so on.
I’m not interested in debating the ideas of the anarchists’ argument. I’m more interested in pointing out that every president—from Washington to Trump, and soon-to-be-president Biden—was or is a flawed man. Some had greater character than others. Some were better at doing the job than others. Some were statesmen; others, mere politicians.
But they were flawed men, all.
So, What Else Is New?
This truth hit home to me the other day while doing my morning Bible reading. I was in Genesis, the account of Isaac and his sons Jacob and Esau. In the history of Israel, three names are held in near reverence: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But they were flawed men, all.
Think about Isaac and Jacob for a minute. Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, even wearing her veil, must have turned heads. When visiting a foreign land for a time, Isaac feared that someone of rank would desire Rebekah and kill him to get her. So, he passed her off as his sister. Hmmm…a lesson learned from dear ol’ dad!
His parenting skills were a bit lacking, too. In spite of God’s telling him that Esau (the elder son) would serve Jacob (the younger), Esau was dad’s favorite. In a brash stroke of favoritism and defiance of divine revelation, he fully intended to give the blessing to Esau. That is, he would make Esau the brother that Jacob would serve.
This created a terrible mess. The family splintered apart. To be sure, there was plenty of blame to go around with each member of the family, but dad’s flaws instigated it all.
The chosen son, Jacob, had plenty of his own flaws. Wouldn’t give his famished brother anything to eat unless Esau relinquished his birthright. Later, in a scheme with mom, he cheated Esau out of dad’s blessing through deception and downright lying. He ended up having to run for his life!
So here’s the thing. Those of us who forget about our own boatload of flaws—or as Jesus put it, “the beam in your own eye”—conclude that such flawed men should be written off, relegated to a footnote in the annals of history. They certainly aren’t worthy of statues or holidays in their honor!
And yet….
As Jacob fled from his rage-filled brother, the deceiver had an encounter with God. Amazingly—to those who have no flaws, anyway—God didn’t strike him dead in this encounter. Nor did He chide the deceiver. He didn’t even bring up the flaws!
Instead, God told him…
“I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
– Genesis 28:13–15 (ESV)
This is called “grace,” amazing grace. Sounds sweet, doesn’t it?
God didn’t ignore the flaws, or sins, of Jacob—nor of his father and grandfather before him. Over the next several years, the deceiver will be worked over pretty hard as God deals with him. When we get to the end of his life, we read of a man much humbled.
But while He didn’t ignore the flaws, God also didn’t allow those flaws to stand in the way of accomplishing His divine purpose for Jacob’s life—and indeed for all of redemptive history! In His amazing grace, God used flawed men!
And he still does.
Some flawed men—presidents or not—accomplish great things on the world stage. Some are merely average. Some, well, not even that.
In the context of teaching on the Christian’s relationship to his government, Paul exhorts,
Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.
— Romans 13:7 (ESV)
Even though they are flawed men, all.
Excellent message.