Broken People - Part 2

Let’s be honest: Every human hero is still a sinner at heart.  At best, any person is a mixture of their best and their worst; their strengths and their weaknesses.

I’ve been watching the pulling down of monuments to historical figures with very mixed feelings.  I tend to be interested in learning from history – both the good and the bad – because I am not interested in reliving its worst chapters.  Still, I can recognize the offense of various Civil War generals and am willing to learn their history – again both good and bad – without making them even appear to be heroes to affirm or emulate with prominent monuments.

But what to do with monuments to historical figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Christopher Columbus?  Each were exemplary in some ways, and made contributions to human history that are worth noting and affirming.  It would be good for everyone to know exactly why King George III called George Washington “the greatest man in the world.”  Our current leaders could all stand to emulate the character trait of humility that the King of England recognized in Washington.

But should we ignore Washington’s ownership of slaves?  Not at all.

The Gospel of God's grace helps me recognize that every person - even the best person - will still be a sinner with faults, sins and shortcomings. There will some things to applaud, emulate and learn from, and some things to avoid, change and deplore.

Seems to me that we learn the most by knowing the entire story of a person – the good as well as the bad.  But if we erase the person entirely in an effort to scrub history of all that is bad, I fear that we will loose the good as well.

It has always caught my attention that Marxist governments only had one “real person hero” at any given time that was worthy of monuments.  Statues of Lenin abounded while he was in charge.  Statues of Stalin were everywhere while he was in charge.  The same for Mao while he was in charge.  Other monuments might be raised to “the new Soviet man” as a class, but never a representative or heroic or exemplary person.  And when leaders changed, so did the monuments. 

If you can only build monuments to perfect people, you will only have monuments to the one in charge at any given time.

Better to learn from the real people of our past – the good and the bad - than simply salute the power person of the moment.