I remember the first time I watched Amazing Grace. I felt immediately proud and cowardly, feeling both as I resonated with humanity at its best and worst. Wilberforce looked the status quo in the eyes, evil and injustice and profitable as it was, and challenged it. Of course, he was able to do so because he had the money and the power and the influence to ultimately play hard ball with the good old boys.
But the scene I remember from the film is one where sitting around a table, their inability to imagine how they could continue profitable businesses, orderly communities, and the current status quo made Wilberforce’s audience unable to move forward with the abolition of slavery. They were likely people who sought justice in other ways, but this hit too close to home, and their imaginations could not overshadow their greed and lust for power.
I was reading a review this week of Taylor’s new book, “A Slave in the Whitehouse,” (referenced here in this week’s MASH) where she described President Madison as one who worked for fair treatment (relatively speaking of course) for slaves in the country, but upon his death did not free a single one of his own. It was Taylor, the reviewer of the book, who stated, “Madison did not believe that white and black Americans could live side by side on terms of equality and amity. His failure to imagine a world more capacious and tolerant than his own helps explain a good deal of subsequent history, and America’s resistance to the very practice of equality that Madison otherwise did so much to foster.”
I think about Martin Luther King.
I think about Nelson Mandela.
I think about Mahatma Ghandi.
I think about the nameless men and women who follow their imaginations into a different kind of possibility for the future. Not just for and around issues of civil justice, but around issues of technology, healthcare, development, education.
They were no doubt met with others whose imaginations had been stifled, and therefore could not wrestle themselves away from comfort and power to risk them both for the sake of a more kingdom-like future.
And so my mind now turns to those schools, churches and organizations that foster imagination and second-guessing as a guiding principle. It is from these communities that we will see change happen. Of all the downfalls I am at risk of meeting, I hope that one of a failure of imagination isn’t the one that takes me down.
My friend Craig has said before, “Of all the ridiculous things God has called us to do, defending the status quo is not one of them.” And whatever is to break the status quo always begins with a strong imagination.
Pine Tree
djordan
most hopeful 
I definitely agree that imagination is a key ingredient in creating a more just and humane world, and the status quo will not do.
The status quo is much more opaque than imagination, though. And therefore we find ourselves leaning into it, and even defending it, by default.
You have a good point there, especially for those of us who may benefit from the status quo.
When I think about how small the world is now and how more people are alive today than have ever lived, and how few external experiences were available to an excellent human being like Madison I understand his worldview better and his built in limitations. Im not excusing him. It is important to understand the limitations of so many of us. How do we raise awareness and shatter status quo.
Agreed on Madison. I’m interested less in putting him under fire, and more in highlighting the difference between looking the system in the face, with all it’s injustice and explanation for why it cannot be otherwise, and still saying, “there must be a way for something better to be possible.” I could think of reasons for Gandhi and King and Mandela to have pushed for something else. I can think of the same for people in multiple other fields. There’s a success in imagination that sets the pioneers apart. Madison had that imagine in multiple other arenas, of course. So maybe the question is ‘what is it that dulls our imagination?’
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[…] But the scene I remember from the film is one where sitting around a table, their inability to imagine how they could continue profitable businesses, orderly communities, and the current status quo made Wilberforce’s audience unable to move forward with the abolition of slavery. They were likely people who sought justice in other ways, but this hit too close to home, and their imaginations could not overshadow their greed and lust for power…. CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE POST FROM APRIL 14 2012. […]