CANDLE IN THE DARKNESS:
Lighting the path toward freedom for all
Lynn Austin
[Bethany House, 432 pages]
It’s sometimes hard to imagine that less than 200 years ago, it was still legal to own other human beings as slaves, but that was the case while Caroline Fletcher was growing up in Richmond, Virginia, just before the American Civil War. At that point, slavery had been abolished in the Northern United States, but was still legal in the Southern states.
在 Candle in the Darkness, the first in Lynn Austin’s Refiner’s Fire series (recently reprinted in 2014), we’re introduced to the fictional Caroline, a 12-year old Caucasian girl who lives on a farm and whose parents own several slaves. After her mother dies, Caroline is sent to live with her aunt and uncle in Philadelphia. There, she’s exposed to the Northern abolitionist viewpoint on slavery, which lies in opposition to the widespread acceptance of the practice in Virginia and the rest of the South.
Caroline notices that both the supporters and adversaries of slavery make use of Christianity in general, and specific Bible verses, to support their own views. Each faction believes that God is on “their” side, and wants them to defeat the other side. The slaves themselves also believe that God supports them, and eventually, without much action on their part, will somehow lead them towards freedom. This doesn’t make logical sense to Caroline—how can God be on both sides of the same debate at once, when each side wants such different things?
While the abolitionists desire all slaves to be free, and most Southerners see nothing wrong with continuing to own slaves, Caroline also comes to understand that the vast majority of Caucasians tend to see fighting for or against the anti-slavery movement as a “cause,” without thinking about the individual slaves as people. Even Caroline’s eventual lover, Charles, when he fights for the South in the Civil War, says that he’s fighting for a cause—specifically, the Southern states’ right to govern themselves without the interference of Northern beliefs—even though owning slaves is essentially the only matter the two warring parties disagree about. Caroline is different from others in this respect, due to the fact that she has developed close relationships with a few of her family’s slaves. Therefore, acting as a sort of “candle in the darkness” for slaves, she endeavours to make others see that the question of owning them isn’t solely an abstract idea up for debate, but experiences little success with this.
After being caught doing something drastic that could be considered a betrayal of Charles, Caroline temporarily ignores the warnings of one of her slaves, Eli, and begins to bargain with God, promising to give up her future marriage to Charles in exchange for God keeping him safe and sound during wartime. She gives her ring back to her former fiancé, who is furious with her anyways, while he’s on leave from battle due to several severe wounds. Her bargaining doesn’t work, though, and later, Charles ends up going back to the front lines, once again putting his life in danger.
One theme that’s continually present throughout this novel is the idea that people often use religion and spirituality to suit their own ends, whether we’re talking about an individual bargaining with God to get something they want, or an entire group using the Bible to justify their ideologies. This type of behaviour is frequently seen in today’s world, too, but it still rarely does any good. While occasionally, as with the abolitionists, God’s will coincidentally falls in line with a particular group or person’s agenda, Eli makes the perceptive observation that God has his own agenda independent of any earthly being’s desires. He perceives that our lives go more smoothly when we bend ourselves to his will, instead of trying to get him to satisfy us. Whether we’re Christian, Buddhist, Hindu or follow some other spiritual path, we can likely all relate to the relative ease and peacefulness of letting go, relaxing and going with the flow of the universe, as opposed to kicking against the flow in attempts to alter the natural course of events.
Aside from drawing our attention to that important aspect of harmonious living, this book also serves as an excellent reminder that we must not grow too attached to abstract ideals, and must always remember that individual beings are involved at the core level of every event that transpires in the world. While we don’t have slavery vs. abolition to consider in our day, the same sort of theoretical divide can be seen when it comes to capitalism vs. communism, or even liberalism vs. conservatism. The way that white people treated blacks during Caroline’s adolescence and young adulthood in the United States can be likened to how many of us treat the homeless, the uneducated and the unemployed. We must keep in mind that besides being easily labelled categories, these groups are full of individuals who have personalities, emotions and needs similar to those of the rest of us, just as Caroline’s family’s slaves (and the rest of the American slaves) did.
[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]by 艾丽卡•罗伯茨（Erica Roberts）
