Once more social media has become a hive of debate over the last few days, this time over the issue of statues. Some advocating their removal as we as a society no longer uphold things that these statues have come to represent, others arguing they should be kept, a sign of where we’ve come from.
What this boils down to is the place of our history; how we should approach it, and whether we are at risk of rewriting it. However statues themselves are a means of rewriting our history, they’re not neutral things. In building statues or monuments we pull some people and events of our history to the foreground whilst leaving the rest in the background. Furthermore we pull certain aspects of those people and events to the fore whilst overlooking the rest. Monuments to slave traders were built out of gratitude for the perceived good they did with their wealth whilst overlooking where they got that wealth. The statue of Churchill was erected because of his leadership during WWII whilst ignoring the fact that he spent most of the war drunk and held racist views. Statues rewrite history in the way we want to tell it, we flatten people and events into the shape we want to celebrate. Building statues is the very definition of putting people on pedestals, and upon closer scrutiny no-one meets the mark, all are found wanting in some way or another. But the very one who was tried and not found wanting, Jesus Christ, refused to be raised up on a pedestal. He rejected the worldly signs of fame, of being portrayed as the person others wanted him to be. Instead, when he was raised up, it was on a cross, a symbol not of glory, of fame and greatness, but of weakness, shame and death. As humans we will never live up to the mark, and we will always find those to whom we raise statues are in the end found wanting. But through him who was raised up from the earth not on a pedestal but on a cross we are made righteous, our lives not flattened to be pleasing to others or to God, but washed clean of our mess and filled to overflowing with his life and goodness. His light, not our own, shining through the cracks of our broken humanity.
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AuthorI was raised in an Anglican Church, went to a Youth Club run by an Evangelical Church and attended a Baptist Church while at Uni and as such my faith has been influenced by these traditions into what I hope is a more rounded viewpoint. Categories
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December 2021
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