Can you imagine marrying someone and not knowing anything about their life prior to the beginning of your relationship? That would be walking on a relationship minefield just waiting for some explosion to rip through that relationship.
It is not that we need to know every detail, every memory and story of our partner, but it is important we are aware of how they got to be the person we met and with whom we fell into a relationship. History is not only a subject in school, it is something we all have and, to a great extent, carry around with us. Our history is why we are who we have become and is yet a factor in who we are becoming.
I bring this up because I see a movement among many to dismiss history. If we would not love or marry someone about whom we know little or nothing of their past, their parents, their family and their life story, how can we be true to our stewardship as patriots, those who care for their country, if we have a vastly incomplete awareness of its history?
As an example, I hear over and over that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. It was about state’s rights. Those who say this apparently have not read the secession statements of the eleven states that formed the Confederacy. Their statements said it was about slavery. Alexander Hamilton Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy and Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of American in their writings and speeches said it was about slavery sometimes expressed in code language as “our way of life.”
Can a person be great without knowing who they are? Can one be great without an awareness of their dark side, their sin as we would say in the Christian faith? Certainly, such awareness is part and parcel of being a Christian. It is part and parcel of being fully human and on the road to becoming a better and possibly great person. To truly know someone is to know not only their good points, but also their negative aspects.
How can any nation be called great without a full understanding of not only who they are but who they have been; how they got to where they currently are? How can any nation claim to be on a path to greatness without an accurate inventory of its misdeeds as well as its heroic and inspirational moments?
It amazes me that Fundamentalists often claim our nation has some special status with God. Does this mean that somehow God loves Argentinians or Latvians less? Where exactly in the scripture that they claim to take so literally do they find such evidence?
What a stretch it is to go from scripture to such assumptions. It seems to me Matthew included the Wise Men in his birth narrative as a way to express to his presumed Jewish audience in Syria to whom he was writing that Jesus had come for all…. ALL!…not just the nation with whom there is scriptural evidence of a covenant with God. In Jesus God expanded this covenant beyond one nation.
We need to have the courage to face our downside not to beat us up but to give us proper humility and insight so we might learn and not repeat such sin. We must admit if all are sinners, how could any nation composed of sinners not also have its sin and sins?
It sometimes seems to me far too many of the Christian faith must have great fear that grace is not true; that is, that God is not a graceful God. Somehow if we sweep our sins both personal and national under history’s carpet, God might not then be aware of them and will give us a pass. We need reminding grace comes from a very aware God who yet grants us a pass in Christ.
Don’t think for a moment I am saying Jesus came and died for any nation’s sin. Jesus came, died, and rose for all sin and all sinners who pass along some of that sin to their communities, their families, their nation, and their world.
History is more than a story of how someone or something came to be. It is a complicated narrative of experience that informs us where we need to keep going and what we need to admit and cease. History, the fact that we got to where we are and have a future, holds implicit within it the grace of God.