This Dark History Needs To Be Canceled Next

This death-dealing WW I era cannon located at the former Harrisonburg High School was fired off as a part of a Memorial Day event last year.

Many of us are becoming ever more aware of the dark stain of racism on our history. We look back with a renewed horror over the genocide of native Americans, the brutal exploitation of African slaves, and the systematic denial of the rights of African-Americans. How could so many of us people of privilege have been so blind to these realities--and so bland in our response?

In this time of soul searching we rightfully look for ways to remove the symbols of this blight on our past, ask which monuments we should replace, whose life stories we should memorialize, and what kinds of repentance and restitution we need to be seriously engaging in.

And while we are all too slowly learning these lessons, should we also be asking what our current blind spots are, what kinds of similar evils we will later look back on with profound regret at having condoned, justified and even embraced?

Here's one pressing example--war making and militarism.

At the risk of distracting from our need to focus on racism, I pray that in the not too distant future whole generations will rise up and ask, How could any decent human beings have ever armed themselves with swords, spears, guns and bayonets and engaged in the systematic and wholesale slaughter of their own species? How could we have devised and perfected ever more deadly weapons capable of blowing human bodies to bits and of blasting, burning and obliterating whole populations? And how could we have allowed ourselves to be deceived into believing any this was in any way justifiable, honorable and/or noble?

I am not suggesting we disrespect the memories of the millions who have died in our past wars. Far from it. Rather that we engage in a worldwide effort to defund, dismantle and discredit the barbaric systems that have caused the deaths and devastation caused by war, just as we have delegitimized practices like cannibalism, slavery, racial discrimination, torture, inquisitions, witch trials, public hangings and burning people at the stake.

Aligning ourselves with Jesus and the prophets will give us the ability to reject the insanity of the twin evils of militarism and racism and to dream of a future in which swords will be shaped into plowshares, wolves will lie down with lambs, and we will study war no more.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was widely criticized for seeing the connection between these twin sins as he courageously opposed US involvement in the Vietnam war and the disproportionate number of young black men who were being sacrificed in that bloody invasion.

Now is the time for God's people to be sure they stand firmly on the right side of history, and to embrace the kind of justice and mercy that never needs to be erased.