Barbarians were nomads who destroyed the remnants of a civilization they could not understand. And there are similarities between today’s political correctness and the barbarians who sacked Rome A.D. 476.
Books are being refused publication, videos and tweets censored with bias, and monuments are being defaced and damaged based solely on the cultural whims of the moment. That is not the normal way we have done business in our nation, so, what’s going on?
Take the statue of Robert E. Lee. Leaving aside the sad reality that many college students can not even identify the combatants of the Civil War, much less who lost, it may be fair to ask why the memory of “The Army of Virginia” should be preserved. After all, Lee led the side which condoned or allowed slavery. He must have been a racist, right? So, the governor of Virginia ordered the monument removed.
Risking that even the question may trigger negative emotions, what if there were good reasons to leave that statue up? Is it not possible that this monument, along with those of Columbus, Jefferson Davis, and others which have been either defaced or removed, can instruct?
For, upon a moment’s reflection, Lee’s statue can remind us. . .
1. How desperately wrong even very good men and women can be.
2. How educated, genteel religious people can have moral blind spots.
3. How every life has an historical context in which it must be judged.
4. How courageously one can fight in the face of overwhelming odds.
5. How to risk your way of life and all of your possessions for your ideals.
6. How slavery, which once was the the law, and the fate of millions, is gone.
7. How to accept defeat and reconcile with a former enemy.
8. How our nation, once torn apart by civil war, can heal.
9. How any sinner can find hope and forgiveness in God.
10. How every life, for better or worse, leaves behind its own record.
Are not any and all of these fit lessons for a republic to ponder?
While neither this, nor any other monument, was erected as a tribute to slavery, it could have served as a stern warning against all forms of oppression and the inconsistencies of humans. But history will teach us nothing if we walk zombie-like into a sea of collective forgetfulness. While some of the protests may be about racial inequality, the riots clearly are not. Even the statues of Lincoln and Gandhi were defaced.
We either will learn from history or foolishly and mindlessly repeat it. Are we the generation to judge all generations? Is this particular self-righteousness justified because it is our own? Are we that arrogant?
Imagine the irony if The White House, built using slave labor, had been demolished before it could become the home of a black president. Can we learn anything from the past by pretending it didn’t happen?
In stark contrast, Scripture is painfully real and truthful about the human condition. If today’s iconoclasts were turned loose on the Bible, little would remain. Each of its sixty-six books is marked by deeds and events we’d like to forget, but need to remember. The Bible records murder, adultery, betrayal, and war, but glorifies none of them.
So, without belittling anyone’s sensibilities, it seems fair to ask this question: Why, in a free nation, do some imitate the egocentric tyrants who ruthlessly tear down monuments of the past? Are their arguments so weak that to win, they must silence all opposition?
Do they not realize such destruction really undermines dialogue about racism or any serious issue? Or maybe it’s just easier to attack a lifeless monument with a sledge hammer than to begin to address the problems of a city. The statue doesn’t fight back. Or does it?
How will the rioters explain their mindless vandalism to their children, since evidence of their tantrum will be posted online forever for all to see? The digital monument to their anarchy may prove more difficult to eradicate than a bronze of Lee and Traveller.
But lest we judge them too harshly, let’s remember that these PC pillagers have not come from afar, but from within, and are merely acting out what they’ve been taught in our halls of higher learning.
Meanwhile, local leaders have caved, literally abandoning the public square to the lawless. That’s what happened in the Roman Empire. The legions, defunded, dispersed. And like ancient Rome, our own capital city has been steeped in corruption and decay for a long, long time.
“Father, we thank you for Scripture which, in recording our sins, draws us to your grace. We pray that our culture will retain enough remembrances of history that we never repeat its mistakes. Help us be both sensitive and sensible, for the sake of our children, our nation, and your Name. Amen.