Result: cowboys delivered firewater and occupied Indian land; Indians burned homesteads and removed cowboy scalps. So every day we chose up sides. If you came out of your house with a big hat and six-shooter, you played cowboy. If you came out with a bow and arrow, you played Indian. Additionally, Indians got to run around with their shirts off. Girls occasionally joined us, but for some reason they refused to be Indians.
Our parents did not have a social or psychological or sexual theory of play. Otherwise they would have appointed a task force to discuss with us the absolute value of pluralism and the compromises made necessary by it. We assumed defending home and family and church against implacable enemies was what grown men did and what little boys got ready for. We did not sit around a table discussing diversity on the assumption that all life styles were equally valid. We ran around the neighborhood yelling like crazy on the conviction that the reality we were growing up into required the categories “good guys” and “bad guys.”
Few of us had ever actually seen an Indian, and none of us had anything specific against any one of their tribe. Our puerile sense of humor even allowed us to laugh when Chief Shortcake died and his wife said “Squaw bury Shortcake.” Later some of us would read Custer’s Last Stand and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and realize just how complicated the issues were between the Red Men and the Palefaces. The United States was once the land of the Braves. Now it is the land of the brave, demonstrating that the distinction between good and evil, them and us, is often difficult to make and often has a conflict component. Unfortunately the argument for peace can be just another power play.
Games like ours are now back in favor. After September 11, 2001, the categories of good guys and bad guys are once again considered real and important. Americans recognize that not all political agendas can be accommodated. Academics who have attacked American foreign policy from the safety of their office chairs for decades are now singing in the chorus, “Get the bastards!”
Given urbanization as a modern mega trend, I suppose many kids today play slick lawyer or tough cop or harried doctor or professional athlete or rock musician. For an older generation frontier images had an immense influence: Gunsmoke, High Noon, the OK Corral, Bonanza, and so on. For me the ancient Christian pilgrimage motif (e.g., The Canterbury Tales) is all mixed up with wagon trains on the Great Plains. The pioneer leaving Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis 11) is associated in my mind with families going west. And in bygone days, going west involved the possibility of encountering hostile Indians who had their, and not your, best interests at heart.
In Pittsburgh, Chuck Noll, former coach of our beloved Steelers, was recently quoted as saying, “Before you circle the wagons, make sure the Indians are inside.” I cannot believe that Mr. Noll actually made that comment and still won four Super Bowls. But if he did, I cannot imagine where he learned to play the game. West of the Mississippi River, where I grew up, the whole point of circling the wagons was to keep the Indians OUT! We made a single exception for the Indian scout who put down his tomahawk and smoked a peace pipe with us. However, no Indian was ever elected wagon master because we could never be entirely sure that he was not just pretending to be on our side long enough to lead us into a deadly ambush. Leadership positions were not available to every player. According to John Calvin, those to be chosen ministers should be of sound doctrine and of holy life, not notorious in any open wickedness which might both deprive them of authority and disgrace the ministry (Inst. IV.3.12). To the extent that Presbyterians cannot agree on either the holy life or sound doctrine, they are playing cowboys and Indians.
I assume most Christians still believe in a difference between true and false, right and wrong, obedience and sin — and between the good guys and the bad guys. This means that from time to time Christians will be required to circle their wagons to defend the faith against marauding bands on the warpath. To invite the raiding party inside with their scalping knives at hand is shear madness — a hair loss nobody wants.
The frustration is that when we circle the wagons the little company of the faithful cannot move forward. Nevertheless, so long as the caravan is under attack, venturing out alone is dangerous. Sticking together is the safest way to fight back and ultimately, we hope, to reach our promised home. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to start for the Promised Land. He also died in faith not having received what was promised (Hebrews 11). It is salutary for today’s frustrated and wagon-circled Presbyterians to remember that the faithful life requires godly obedience not worldly success.
