Grace and peace.

Recently, the National Football League announced that it will play the so-called Black National Anthem before football games in the 2021 season. The song originally made its NFL debut in the 2020 season, where it was played before the start of Week 1 games. According to Office Sports, the NFL plans to make it a “prominent part of big league events.”

Officially entitled “Lift Every Voice And Sing,” the song began as a poem written by James Weldon Johnson, as a tribute to educator Booker T. Washington. It was publicly performed first as part of a celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. In 1919, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) dubbed it “the Negro national anthem. The song is said to be a “cry for liberation and affirmation for African-American people,” and a “prayer of thanksgiving for faithfulness and freedom.” But, while it begins and continues on this theme, the final lines convey anything but gratitude. Here is the song in its entirety. Pay close attention to the last line:

Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
’Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ’til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed.
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past,
’Til now we stand at last,
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

This is a nice song until it reaches the last line. “True to our native land?” Most black Americans are descended from African slaves. Our native land, then, is Africa. Our adopted land, regardless of how and why we got here, is America. Given most of us were born in America, and are therefore Americans, why should we be true to a country where we were not born?

To be true to Africa is to be untrue to America. It cannot be any plainer than that. The Lord Jesus said that a dog cannot serve two masters, as it will love one and hate the other. This can be applied to other things in life. A man cannot be faithful to his present wife and his ex-wife. An employee cannot be faithful to his present boss and his old boss. And a professional athlete cannot be faithful to his present team and his old team. Men have tried to do each of these, and have failed miserably. A man can no more be faithful to two countries than he can be faithful to two women or two gods. HE WILL LOVE ONE AND HE WILL HATE THE OTHER. This is especially true if the two countries are idealogically dissimiliar as in the case of America and Africa.

Slavery no excuse

It is possible to love one’s native country, and still feel an obligation to one’s adopted country—even if he came to that country a slave. Joseph, the son of Jacob, did this very thing. As our ancestors came to America as slaves, so was Joseph sold into slavery in Egypt. And, as has happened to many Blacks, Joseph served time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. And with all this, Joseph had no problem assimilating into Egyptian culture. He adopted Egyptian dress, he adopted Egyptian speech, and he married an Egyptian woman.

No complaints about equality

Joseph was the second greatest man in the kingdom next to Pharaoh, but his own servants would not even eat with him, because the Egyptians considered it an abomination to eat with a Hebrew (Genesis 43:32). Yet, even under those circumstances, Joseph chose to remain in Egypt. Why? I say out of gratitude. Joseph could have been very bitter about being a slave in Egypt, serving time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and being treated like a lower life form by his own servants. Yet, Joseph chose to be grateful, realizing that God had orchestrated his life. Joseph never complained about his circumstances, and the Bible does not record him saying anything derogatory about Egypt or the Egyptians. Joseph loved his native land, even leaving instructions to be buried there when he died. But he felt an obligation to his adopted land: the land where he began as a slave, but was set free and allowed to prosper.

Why should Blacks be any different? Sure, we came to America as slaves. But we are not slaves now. A slave didn’t own anything, not even the clothes on his back. But probably 90% of black Americans today own a TV, and at least half of that own a car. A slave had no money, but even the poorest black in America today has at least a nickel in his pocket. Meanwhile, it is said that over 70% of the world’s population doesn’t know what pocket change is. Most slaves couldn’t read or write, but most black American’s today are literate. A slave could make no decisions about raising his children, because his children were the property of the slave master. But today, in America, most Black parents can decide where they want their children to go to school. And, lastly, all slaves worked for free, while all blacks today work for pay, even if its the minimum wage.

The point I’m making is that like Joseph, Blacks began as slaves, but were set free and eventually allowed to prosper. Many Whites (and even some Blacks) in America have the same sentiments as the Egyptians when it comes to dining with Blacks. And that upsets many Blacks, for some reason. This is why Dr. Martin Luther King boycotted the lunch counters, when if it were me, I would have brought a sack lunch and ate at the park. You cannot legislate love. And you shouldn’t try.

True to which God?

Where there is a conflict of allegiance, there will also be a conflict of worship, because every country has its god. This is accurately reflected in the line, “true to our God, true to our native land.” For the same reason a man cannot serve to countries, he cannot serve two gods. There is biblical precedent for this. In the Old Testament, a Syrian general named Naaman begins to worship the God of Israel after he is healed of leprosy. But, though he had vowed to worship no other God but the Lord (2 Kings 5:17), he was duty-bound to accompany his king into the house of his god when the latter worshipped. Knowing that he could no longer worship dumb idols after pledging himself to the Living God, but knowing also that he still had an obligation to his king, Naaman asked the Lord to forgive him anytime he accompanied his king into the house of his idol (2 Kings 5:18). Naaman served one king, but his true loyalty was to the King of kings.

Africa has many gods. So, if one were to be true to Africa, then one would have to choose to worship one or all of those gods. The principal gods of Africa are the Jesus of Roman Catholicism and the Allah of Islam. The despotic nature of both of these religions proves demonstrably that neither the “other Jesus” nor Allah is reconcilable with the God of the Bible, who wishes for all men to be free. No Bible-believing, patriotic Black American, then, could be true to Africa or any of its gods.

But isn’t America racist?

Those who complain that America is racist are either marvelously blind to or inexcusably ignorant of the fact that America is the only country in the world that has granted freedom to all of its citizens, including Blacks. One need only travel to Africa (as I have) to see that while some black Africans enjoy many of the privileges white Africans enjoy, none enjoy all; and the majority enjoy few. In America, however, Blacks have been granted many of the same opportunities as whites. They can hold virtually any job whites can hold (and make the same pay), own property, live virtually anywhere they choose, and get a good education. And these opportunities are granted by the Constitution, and are therefore law.

One would have to be very naive to think that in a country where blacks where once enslaved, everyone is happy with this arrangement. Blacks are free today because the great martyred president Abraham Lincoln and others like him believed that all men, including Blacks, deserved to be free. Jefferson Davis, however, and others like him did not agree. They believed that Blacks should be enslaved, and started a war to decide this question. By the grace of the Lord Jesus, Abraham Lincoln won that war, signing the Emancipation Proclamation, temporarily abolishing slavery. Subsequently, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery forever.

But there are still those who believe that Blacks should be enslaved. What today is called racism is really resistance to the fact that the very people who once used to be property are now free to own property. Racism, then, is the direct bi-product of freedom. Our bulwark against such people is the Constitution which, thankfully, enough people support for Blacks to remain free. The existence of “racists” doesn’t make America racist. America is a country of laws. If, then, America were racist, as many rebellious blacks contend, then there would be more laws limiting our liberties than those granting us liberty. As it stands, the opposite is true. While there is no question that many Americans are racist, America is not.

Racism or slavery?

Blacks must understand that we cannot have our cake and eat it too. We have to choose between racism and slavery, because—make no mistake—those are our only choices. There can be no freedom for blacks without racism, because not everyone wants to see us free. And if you are waiting for a day when everyone will be in agreement that blacks deserve to be free, then please don’t hold your breath. That day will never come. If you want to be free, then you must accept racism, because the only alternative is slavery.

Be true to your adopted land

To want anything more than freedom is to be greedy. And to want everyone to be happy with your freedom is to be foolish. America has already apologized for the crime of slavery by granting us freedoms that are the envy of the world. This country doesn’t owe us anything more. So, if you want to be “true to your native land,” then move to Africa. But if you want to be true to your adopted land, then remain in America. And, if you remain, be grateful.

I don’t know about you, but the “Black National Anthem” as it is written, doesn’t represent me.

P.S. If you must sing, “Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing,” then at least replace “true to our God, true to our native land” with “true to our God and our adopted land.” That’s what I have done.