Please do not insist that we remove every reminder of our struggle to be who we ought. Leave us traces of our wrong-doing in the form of art. Let some things stand to help us to recollect who we do not want to be and wish we never had been. These are fine artifacts as they exist to teach; to show us a history we hope never to repeat.
Perhaps in our desire to do away with every unpleasant memory we may do ourselves and our posterity great harm. What if the Bible is truth and its explanation of wickedness beginning in us, originating in human beings of each and every color is accurate? What then if there is nothing to bring this truth to mind? Would we not be destined to replicate many difficult and painful lessons should be already learned?
Let us think carefully before rendering our past free of hard things. For memory is not restricted to the past; it exists also to inform the future, and to ignore this aspect of memory, to relegate this valuable tool of the mind to a place of obscurity is a fool’s game.
Rather, let us stare appalled. Let us gaze aghast at these moments in our corporate story and at similar happenings in our individual stories, and let us fall to our knees and beg God to help us to come to healthy terms with the knowledge, and with ourselves, that these hideous and contemptuous events may never again occur.
Copyright 2017. L.L. Shelton.