History is not just “one damn thing after another,” as the British historian A.J.P. Taylor once quipped, nor is it simply a study of the past to make sense of events that occurred. The study of past events gives us insights into our present and can serve as a guide for the future. The importance of contorting past events into lies to create a future was well understood by people like Hitler, a mastermind of the art.
In our own Nation we have had similar attempts, most notably the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy. Now we have the attempted creation of January 6 into something it was not, a peaceful and righteous determination by people cheated out of a fair election. It was a riot, egged on by a man who could not take defeat.
Slavery was not “an opportunity,” for the enslaved to learn new skills. It was a brutal practice, tearing mothers and children apart, not to mention holding millions of people under the lash based on race. The ugly parts of our past cannot be pushed under the rug; they must be confronted if we are to overcome their evils. Rewriting the past has serious consequences and we are seeing them played out today.
Prayer for the Day
Bound to a past of our imagination and trapped by our pride,
We struggle to understand the world in which we live;
Confused and searching for realities that do not exist,
We want fixed points of certainty that confirm our preconceptions.,
But you, O God, force us face who we are and what we have done,
So we are able to live and act in humility.
In the name of the One who lived for others,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
History, with its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
Maya Angelou, American poet and writer ((1928-2014)
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Georges Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher, essayist (1863-1952)
Tell us of the former things, what they are, so that we may consider them,
And that we may know their outcome, or declare to us the things to come.
Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know you are gods;
Do good, or do harm, that we may be afraid and terrified.
Isaiah 41: 22-23