God’s Favor

Today, I take you back three hundred years, to a fireside, as my ancestors considered whether God’s favor justified their actions.

Reliance On the English

Wheat dumplings simmered in the metal pot over a fire. Nourourhquotkan watched the flames deep in thought. Nourouhquotkan had taken the name John Pagett at the insistence of his clan leaders, who had urged everyone to take names of prestigious English colonists, thus, ensuring the respect of the English. He was the husband to Runehu’hu, which meant turtledove. He loved the sound that her name made as it rolled off the tongue, Rooneh-hoo’-hoo. However, to satisfy the ukuwana’?tha? (oodoo-wawnaw-ahk-tha-ahk) or clan mother, he took to calling her Jane.

John’s thoughts about the name Jane turned his thinking to the metal pot sitting directly on the open flame. He thought about how uneasy it made him that his people were becoming more and more reliant on trade with the English. The clay pots the Tuscarora had used previously could not rest directly on an open fire. True, the metal pots were superior, but this was just another indicator of the Tuscaroras’ need to trade deer skin to obtain these conveniences.

As John rested on his mat, he held a stone tobacco pipe in his mouth. He said to Jane, “Teethha Hancock is head of the bear clan. His actions are justified by God.” Teethha is the Tuscarora word for king.

War In North Carolina

John continued, “The English will not be satisfied until they have taken all our land and removed our bloodline from the earth.”

Jane shook her head. “This is nonsense. Your hatred for the English will only result in our destruction. Please do not drag us into the conflict with the English. The decisions made by this war captains will have far-reaching consequences for our people.”

Jane had a sense of foreboding that the coming events would lead to war in North Carolina. Jane feared that many of her mother’s clan would not survive, that some would end up as enslaved people. She did not know that this was her fate, and did not know that her own husband would not survive? She did know that her future was not certain.

Justified By God

Jane was not a Christian. It would be later in life that she would meet and marry Thomas Kersey and learn of the sacrifice of Jesus. On this night, she believed in Tarenhiawagen—the Master of Life and Ruler of Skyland. It was he who had led the Tuscarora from the Great Lakes east to their present home on the Neuse River on North Carolina’s coast. . . a place that he called Cautanoh. Thinking themselves favored by Tarenhiawagen made them believe they were superior to other people and justified their actions.

John could feel it in his heart that revenge on the English was justified by Tarenhiawagen or God. He was truly “righting a wrong.” The actions of the English were against God. I can hear him saying, “I wasn’t raised that way,” as he railed against the abuses of the English toward this people. How could he mingle with people whose lifestyles so blatantly ran afoul of how he’d been reared?

A Feeble Measuring Stick

Like many of us, John conflated his righteousness with his upbringing—the lives of his forebears was the stick by which he measured his actions. This hit too close to home, as I considered his feeble measuring stick, which resembled my own legalistic stubbornness. The “right” things we do only yield a temporary good feeling and too often are tainted with a little pride and a bit of superiority.

I can hear the voice of Jesus speaking to me . . . speaking to us. Your genes don’t constitute your righteousness. It is my blood, not yours, that prepares you to sit at my table. These words offer a needed dose of humility.

For us, the only proper response is to be thankful with a humble heart. It is not our genes and we can’t be good enough. We are blessed with his favor because of God’s grace. Let’s reflect on that as we sit around the hearth drinking our morning coffee.

“He said to them, ‘You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.’”

Luke 16:15

Prayer

Jesus, please grant us the foresight to resist self-righteousness, which only leads to our destruction. We are not justified by our goodness, but by you. Amen.

Copyright © 2023 Chuck Locklear

Also, see The Lost Colony of Roanoke.