unPHILtered: The Way I See It (9 page)

Washington, who was one of our greatest presidents and generals, repeatedly talked about God’s blessings on America throughout his life. In his farewell address on September 19, 1796, he said: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness.” Washington believed religion and morality were the pillars on which America would stand and flourish. Well, they were for
the first two hundred years of our country’s existence, but it’s not that way anymore.

Washington wasn’t the only founding father who believed religion and morality would be the backbone of America. John Adams, the second U.S. president, wrote to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts on October 11, 1798: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any others.” In an August 28, 1811, letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Adams also wrote: “Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of republicanism and all free government, but of social felicity under all governments and in all the combinations of human society.”

And there were others. In a speech at Plymouth, Massachusetts, on December 22, 1820, Daniel Webster, a U.S. senator and secretary of state, said: “Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.” John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, wrote in an October 12, 1816, letter to Pennsylvania lawmaker John Murray: “Real Christians will abstain from violating the rights of others, and therefore will not provoke war. Almost all nations have peace or war at the will and pleasure of rulers whom they do not elect, and who are not always wise and virtuous. Providence has given to our people the choice of their
rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”

Abraham Lincoln, our sixteenth president and the man who fought to end slavery in America, said in his farewell speech on February 11, 1861: “Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended [George Washington], I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be every where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.”

After reading the ideologies and beliefs of our founding fathers and other U.S. presidents, I’m convinced the solution to America’s problem is not a political fix. It’s a spiritual fix. Therefore, we have to start from the bottom, and the American people have to be won over. We have to elect leaders who are spiritual to become our politicians, and then they’ll fix the country. I’m not suggesting something new. I’m only reminding people of what was said more than two hundred years ago, when our once-great country was founded.

Of course, you can go back to the Bible and find the same thing. As it says in Exodus 18:21,
“Select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens.”
We have a few good men and women like that in Washington, DC, today, but not nearly enough of them. You
get evil leaders in power and the next thing you know the whole thing falls apart. When the populace becomes evil, we elect evil leaders, and there you go. America is still a superpower in the world, but it has third-world leaders. Our leadership has to change.

I am convinced the battle for America will be won from the bottom up, from the people to the politicians, and not from the top down. When the converted outnumber the corrupt, America will win. Unless the people change, the politicians who are the hogs at the trough will keep going to Washington, DC. When the converted win, our families will be back together under one roof, parents will start raising their children again, and everyone will feel a responsibility to work and contribute to society. It has often been said that America’s political structure is a “government of laws, not men.” But bad men are more than capable of corrupting good laws, and good men will rule well in the absence of good laws. We don’t have enough good men in Washington, DC, anymore.

Right now, there are enough ungodly people in America to control the country. There are more of them and not enough of us to turn the country around. In fact, there are more of them than us for the first time in America’s history, in my opinion. When Jesus returns, righteousness will rule once again, this time forever. So here’s my advice, America: go forth, do the best you
can, and try to turn the population toward God—hoping that when we get enough godly people, we’ll put godly men in government. What if that fails and we’re not able to accomplish it? Well, just remember that you who belong to Jesus are the kingdom of God and the kingdom of God will last forever, even if our beloved America should fall.

I
f you really want to know what kind of a person a particular man or woman is, the best way to do it might be to ask everyone who has ever come into contact with them. What does his wife say about him when he is not around? What does her husband say about her? What do their children say about them? Ask all of their friends and everyone they do business with what kind of person they are. Ask anyone: “Hey, what about this person?” Interview every last individual who has known them over their lifetime, and you would probably be able to come to some conclusion about who they really are. You know what? That is what people should do if they want to find out who the real Phil Robertson is.

After
GQ
magazine published a story about
Duck Dynasty
in December 2013, some people criticized me for quoting Bible
verses relating to sin after a reporter asked me a question about homosexuality (you’ll read more about that later). Other people were upset about comments I made about growing up with African Americans in Louisiana during the civil rights era. Look, folks, we can argue until the end of the earth about what constitutes sin in the eyes of God. Our opinions about certain lifestyles might be different, but I can promise you one thing: there isn’t a racist bone in my body. There never has been and never will be. I’m confident anyone who has known me during the last four decades, including many African Americans who were and are among my closest friends, would tell you the same thing.

Before I converted and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I was sexually immoral and committed a lot of other sins. I was an idolater, adulterer, thief, drunkard, and slanderer. I was guilty of fits of rage, jealousy, impurity, and dishonesty. And to top it all off, I was given to hatred no matter the color, whether someone was white, black, Indian, or Asian. There was no racism in my life even then. I hated everyone equally if they tried to slow down my sinful life. That is the kind of man I was during the first twenty-eight years of my life. But the new me, which came to be because of the grace of God during the last forty years, learned to
love
. I can’t go back and undo the mistakes I made in the past, but God undid them for me. He can undo yours for you, too. If people are given to racism, whatever color they are, remind them of Acts 17:24
–
26:
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth
and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth.”

According to the Scripture, God made every nation from one man—Adam. The text says that every one of us—whether our skin is black, white, red, yellow, blue, or green—came from the same dude. That contradicts what my Sociology 101 professor tried to teach me at Louisiana Tech University. He tried to tell me that there are three groups of humans in the world: Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. But the Bible says God made every one of us from one person, and I don’t know what color skin Adam had and neither do you. However, I doubt very seriously that he was Caucasian because he lived in what is now Iraq, so I’m guessing he looked like someone of Middle Eastern descent.

Some of us need to get off the color code in America and take to heart, once and for all:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”
(John 3:16). We need to understand that we’re all humans and Americans, regardless of how we might look.

During the interview with the
GQ
reporter, I told him that I believed our country’s founding fathers were Bible-loving and
godly men. He reminded me that many of the founding fathers approved of slavery.

“Do you believe in slavery?” he asked me.

I told him I absolutely did not.

Then the reporter asked me if I ever witnessed an African American being mistreated by a white person while growing up in the South. Now, you have to remember that I spent much of my youth in Dixie, Louisiana, during the civil rights struggle. I told the reporter that I’d never personally witnessed an African American being mistreated by a white person or a white person being mistreated by an African American for that matter. I never saw it happen. I grew up in a very small farming community in Caddo Parish, which is in the northwest corner of Louisiana, near the Arkansas border. I never witnessed any friction between races, and I grew up with whites and blacks. That was my personal experience at that time in my life.

But that doesn’t mean I’m naïve enough to think that African Americans weren’t badly mistreated for more than a century—even after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States in 1865. The days of slavery and then Jim Crow laws in the South were the darkest days in our country’s history. Where I grew up, segregation laws were in place, and whites and blacks attended separate schools and used separate restrooms. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a “colored” restroom. I looked at it and thought to myself,
Separate bathrooms? What kind of idiot came up with that?
I know African Americans were badly
mistreated in the South, including in Louisiana. Historians have documented thousands of cases of horrific lynchings, beatings, and murders in the South during the twentieth century, but I never saw an incident with my own eyes, which is what I told the
GQ
reporter. If it ever happened in my neck of the woods, it didn’t occur in the open because I never saw it or heard about it. At the time, I didn’t know what Jim Crow laws were because I was only a kid. I was born into the culture and didn’t know any better.

My parents weren’t racists by any stretch of the imagination, and they taught my brothers and sisters and me to love everyone unconditionally—skin color was not a factor. For much of my childhood, we lived next door to Melinda and Charlie Randall, who were African Americans, and we loved them and they loved us. We played with their children almost every day, and they were among our closest friends. We broke bread together and hunted and fished together. My brother Silas taught many of the Randall children how to swim in a watering hole near our farm. My family and their family were among the poorest in town; maybe that’s what brought us together. Though nobody ever told us we were poor.

The African American families who lived in Dixie when I lived there were some of the most generous people I’ve ever
known. When my father broke his back while working on an oil rig and was immobilized for more than a year, a few of the African American families in town took up a collection during the holidays because they knew my parents wouldn’t have the money to buy us kids presents. When we woke up Christmas morning, there was a basket stuffed full of fruit, canned goods, and candies on the front porch. At the time, we didn’t know where it came from, but we ate every bit of it, that’s for sure. The black families had decided to help a neighbor in need because they loved us, and I know my parents would have done the same for them.

Even though my parents didn’t have much in terms of money and material possessions, they were always generous and hospitable, because that’s what the Bible tells us to do. Our house sat across the road from railroad tracks, and I suspect that every “hobo”—as we called them then—who traveled that particular line of tracks must have known where the Robertson house was located. My mother never turned away anyone who was in need of food, water, or clean clothes. When trains stopped in Dixie, many of the men jumped out of the rail cars and made their way to our back door. They ate whatever we were eating, whether they were black or white, and us kids would gather in the kitchen to watch them. My mother was a brave woman for inviting so many strangers into our home.

One morning, I asked one of the men, “How is that plate of squirrels and dumplings?”