day no. 16,068: his business to be better

"It is very right to rebuke our own race or religion for falling short of our own standards and ideals. But it is absurd to pretend that they fell lower than the other races and religions that professed the very opposite standards and ideals. There is a very real sense in which the Christian is worse than the heathen, the Spaniard worse than the Red Indian, or even the Roman potentially worse than the Carthaginian. But there is only one sense in which he is worse; and that is not in being positively worse. The Christian is only worse because it is his business to be better." -- G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

When history proposes that the sins and sons of Europe invaded the sinless sons of the Americas, it does violence to verity. The conquest of the Americas was not done sinful sinners usurping saintly saints. The conquerors may have been willing to sacrifice the lives of men in order to gain power, wealth, fame and land, but the natives of the land had been sacrificing men to that end already.

The western men, however, had good reason to know better, whereas the natives did not. This is why the natives not only allowed the death of men, but required it in some cases. They didn't simply accept casualties as part of the plan, but saw casualty as the plan itself. Men had to die. The death of men was not merely permitted as a means to an end in the native Americas, but it was the very end in itself. The fallen sons of God crossed the oceans long before the fallen sons of Adam.

The reason we so readily blame the western men, and rightly so, is because they ought to have known better. The reason we so easily forget the sins of the natives, and wrongly so, is because we have inherited western man's sense of justice, something we should never have received had we been born natives. The western men ought to have known better because they lived under the influence of Christendom. Thus western men missed the mark as Christian men, whereas the natives fell short of shooting at the right target.  To miss the bull's eye is a different kind of falling short than to aim at a different target altogether.

The end of manslaughter was only possible in so far as Christendom succeeded. Even if it fell short of its own standards, its standards were so unique that only its survival could usher in the eradication of human sacrifice. If the natives had won, manslaughter and sacrifice would never have subsided. The only hope for the world was the survival of Christendom, even if carried by sinful men walking out of step at times with its precepts. It does not excuse their missteps, but it does explain why we now assume human sacrifice is abhorrent. That end could not have been achieved had the native devilry triumphed or been left to its own devices.