Former President Jimmy Carter has entered the throng of the heavenly Zion. I’m pretty sure my grandmother—Bigmama—will find a way to snap a selfie with him. In my early teens, Bigmama and I would spar every time the evening news came on. A dyed-in-the-wool Democrat and Southern Baptist, she was ever at Mr. Carter’s defense. I, on the other hand, waited impatiently for the Reagan Revolution.
Some years later I received a letter from Mr. Carter after he had read Putting Amazing Back Into Grace. Jimmy Carter was not as conservative a Baptist as Bigmama, but he taught Sunday School every week, spoke openly of being “born again,” and showed his faith by his deeds for others. The “Year of the Evangelical” (1976) coincided with his rise to power, carried aloft by the evangelical vote.
Whatever you think of his policies, Carter was a Christian. His idealism was born of Christian values even as his realism was curbed by the knowledge that we’re all fallen sinners who need God’s grace. I don’t think we would have seen eye-to-eye on a number of doctrinal and political issues, but he was the sort of Southern Baptist my grandmother was:
“I don’t know about tomorrow, I don’t seem to understand.
But I know who holds tomorrow and I know who holds my hand.”
I miss those old days, when we debated policy instead of hating each other. Do we know the one who holds the future is the one who holds our hand? I’m pretty sure Jimmy Carter did.
It’s nice to take a break from political wrangling and be reminded that the ingredients of a decent life are those of a decent society.
Image: President Jimmy Carter at his desk in the Oval Office (1978), courtesy Jimmy Carter Library. Photo by Children’s Bureau Centennial, taken May 29, 2012. Creative Commons {{CC BY 2.0}}, resized by Sola Media.
