Religious symbols and memorials all testify of individual faith and real events; why are so many opposed or offended by them? Memorial parks now have many vacancies where tombs, statues, and images have been removed because someone was offended by them.
If the event that raised the memorial had never happened, there would be no memorial. Confederacy would still exist as would the legal trade of human beings as a commodity. After over two hundred years of slavery and Southern independence, I suppose no one would really care about the issue today. The North would mind their own business, as is custom even today, and the South would simply live free with their slaves and trade rights.
We certainly wouldn't have memorials to the fallen to remind us of our sin because we would be simply living free with our economic freedom and independence and sinless.
Sinless...sinless...sinless; now there is a thought. The cold, hard truth is we did sin and had to erect memorials to remind us of those sins. Statues of General Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, southern soldiers were erected to remind us what we as a people suppressed, abused, and used human beings for our own benefit and amusement. These southern people cried from their graves that we the living would learn from their tragic sin and their sin would never become our sin.
Those who think themselves academic will try to explain the atrocities of the past as a tidy little essay and sound impressive and even some sounding victimized, but I say, please do your own research. Work, dig, labor, and sweat blood for the good of humanity lest we forget the crimes against humanity committed before us.
Walking through the Holocaust Museum will offend me;
Walking through Bull Run National Park will offend me;
Walking through the Chinese Railroad Workers Exhibit in San Francisco will offend me;
Walking through a Japanese Internment Camp will offend me;
Walking through a factory museum with pictures of poor women and children labor will offend me;
Walking through a cinema history museum will offend me;
Walking through a Coal Mine exhibit in West Virginia will offend me...
Surely I would never be so capable of such inhumanity... or would I? My DNA suggests UK Celtic, Scandinavian, and Eastern Europe Semitic, but money always talks and I may have a price.
Oh God, Oh God have mercy on me and on the whole world for our rejection of truth.
What are we to do without the reminders? After all, we are only human and money talks.
Surely I would never be so capable of such inhumanity... or would I? The Cross of Jesus reminds me that I am offended by sin, by My Sin. What would I do without the Holy Reminder?
About Me
- Anita Mullins Brown
- From NE Ohio, lived in Appalachia for 20 years, now in Eastern NC for 20 years.
