Monuments of Failure & The Grace of God

Jul 2

Jul 2 Monuments of Failure & The Grace of God

A feature of some of the Black Lives Matters protests has been the removal or vandalising of statues. A number of campaigns are under way asking for local councils to remove those statues of people associated with slavery or with racist views. The mayor of London has ordered a review into all landmarks. I quite understand. Slavery and racism are not what we want to celebrate about our past, not to mention the impact it has on certain members of our community. Interestingly the same group has yet to target statues of some of the best-known open racists: Charles Darwin and Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood).

However, this is not a universal opinion. Sir Geoff Palmer, emeritus Professor at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh (and Britain’s first black professor) thinks not. He worries about obscuring our history which gave conditions to racism, preferring explanatory plaques, a good summary is found here.

I am not going to make a case either way. I am just pleased I do not have to make these decisions.

It did make me reflect on a couple of things that I have read recently. In our family worship we are reading through Chronicles. As with the books of Kings, we find figures who “did right in the eyes of the LORD” and those who did not, and that being an understatement. However, even many of the heroes are a mixed bag. Solomon’s reign was characterised by wisdom, expansion of Israel’s borders, the Queen of Sheba brings gifts, but leaves with more. She observed his servants’ robes (2 Chronicles 9), yet in 1 Kings 11 we hear about his chariots and 100s of foreign wives and concubines and are told “they turned his heart away” (you think!). Even with David we see various flaws and how they come to a head in the Bathsheba incident and its knock-on consequences. Such incidents are not restricted to these two men but are found across the Bible. These are significant flaws.

The other thing we are reading as a family is “Silent Witnesses” by Garry Williams (and available from the GRUK online bookstore). It is a series of mini bios on Christians. In the intro Garry points out that all of these people are seriously flawed. If we just read about heroes from the past we feel like utter failures. What we see is that God worked through seriously flawed men and women in gracious ways.

We read of some of the greats like Edwards and Whitfield being kind to slaves, but it never occurred to them that they should not be slaves! Sometimes we can have a misapplied notion that God has assigned us our place (overlooking those God raises out of such situations). We might say, “they had their blind spots”, but that one feels like a whopper to us. (These are not the only flaws we find in church history either).

Rather than covering up these failures or using them to negate all that they did, perhaps it is better to see the tension - people who did wonderful things and had great insights, whilst being apparently ignorant of certain evils. Christians are always, at the same time, both sinner and justified, this side of glory. Feel the tension of what humanity is like. People who shared their wealth to help the poor, building schools, hospitals and creating opportunity … built off the back of slavery … which is totally unjustifiable. We see humanity is capable of enormous good and evil. The Reformed faith helps us see that this coexists in an individual. We can judge certain actions as good or evil. However, we should be slow to judge the individual, other than to say that: they desperately need God’s grace found in Jesus Christ, for their justification and sanctification.

When we see heroes are also villains we see a mirror. God may have declared us not guilty, but we have so much yet to change. We call these blind spots, some may see our sin as far worse.

I frequently find a modern irony. That Christians are criticised for judgementalism for having certain standards. But, the same people, when their standards are infringed offer no grace or route to forgiveness. Modern thinking is binary: something doesn’t matter (e.g. sexual morality), or something is ultimate evil (e.g. racism). Humanity then is divided into sinners and saints whom we must make sure get what they deserve.

This is why the gospel is our only hope. God acts in both justice and grace. The cross means we can hold both together, as the hymn goes, “where wrath and mercy meet”. I can hold to a standard as correct that I cannot meet as another has met it for me and died for my transgression. For the Christian: it matters and it’s paid. I can call out an evil (like racism) knowing that I’m a failure too that needs grace.

Sir Geoff Palmer wonders if future generations would thank us for tearing up these monuments. My thought is, what will future generations make of us? I have little doubt that in 100 years history will look unkindly on us. Dealing with gender dysphoria with surgery and cancer inducing hormone treatment (body must conform to mind, not the other way), abortion, the modern slave trade, dithering over definitions of genocide rather than preventing it to name a few. I share protestors passion for justice and cooperate responsibility, but how far are we willing to go? How will history judge the monuments we leave?