God and men in history
Michael Haykin quotes from General “Stonewall” Jackson about his concern with the elevation of men in the minds of others:
The manner in which the press, the army, and the people seem to lean upon certain persons is positively frightful. They are forgetting God in the instruments He has chosen. It fills me with alarm. [Stonewall Jackson's Book of Maxims, ed. James I. Robertson, Jr. (Nashville: Cumberland House, 2002), 85].
Haykin’s application to the study of history is helpful:
the actions of men are never simply that and nothing more. While no contemporary historian is blessed with inspired insight, nevertheless, some judgement as to God’s actions in the past needs to be made, lest we forget God in the instruments he uses.
At the same time, Jackson’s wisdom illuminates a problem as much with the armies of the Lamb as with the armies of any human general. Do we idolise certain men, certain ministers? Do we think, speak, act as if the progress of God’s kingdom depends upon them? Does our practice show that this is what we have come to believe, whatever our profession may be? Let us take care lest we forget God in the instruments he has chosen.
