Nations keep their history alive through monuments that mark significant persons or events. Memory is important, and we need markers for our memories. In recent years, the toppling of public statues has become a kind of “mark of protest” for the topplers. My question: what are we saying about all the “good” done by the person whose likeness we are desecrating or destroying? Did their “bad” outweigh their “good?”
Memory and the celebration of our history is important. It is an important dynamic in all the world’s great religion. In Christianity we sing a hymn, Come Thy Fount of Every Blessing, written by the 18th-century pastor and hymnist Robert Robinson. He penned the words at age 22 in the year 1757. The lyrics, which dwell on the theme of divine grace, are based on 1 Samuel 7:12, in which the prophet Samuel raises a stone as a monument, which he named Ebenezer. The second stanza of the hymn begins
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
What kind of language is that? What’s an Ebenezer? Samuel knew Israel could not have won the battle on their own; in fact, he was certain it was really the Lord who had won. He didn’t want that fact forgotten, so he set up the stone monument and named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”
Christians know that forgetting is dangerous, so we “raise our Ebenezer,” confessing as Robinson expressed in the last stanza of his hymn,
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
We must guard against living in the past yet staying mindful of all the good and grace that has brought us to the present.