Cultural Original Sin

We are seeing what I believe is an interesting metaphor. With the current (and changing) culture acting as They Who Judge The Quick and the Dead. Unfortunately, although we have a lidless-eye mutable judge (current culture) we have no redeemer for this realm. Once you are lost, you are lost.

We are seeing the tag of Moral Reprobate assigned to those who are are or have been heroes to some. Recently the statues of slave traders, slave apologists, and slave defenders have been toppled.

I think this (toppling statues) is a good thing. Firstly for the putrefying body-of-death libertarian inside who has not completely expired and who thinks any public money spent on (almost anything) let alone a statue is a waste. But this is trivial.

The bigger reason is of course the obvious one: Robert E. Lee fought to defend the practice of enslaving human beings made in the Image of God.

I cannot fathom the visceral response to seeing Lee honored with statuary among those from the race he sought to keep in subjugation. This is not of the "I'm sorry if you are offended" variety, it is of the "Of course you are rightfully offended." But in truth it is simply outside of my experience since I am not a member of a group that has ever faced oppression. ^[1]

I have my own visceral response to Christians who like to point what they view as a mitigating factor: that Lee (how they know this, I'm not sure) was "good Christian man," whatever that is. (Personally, I never met one.) This is totally irrelevant. Theologically I hope he was saved and is now, in the presence of his Lord, fully cognizant of the sinfulness of his ways, a fate that (hopefully) awaits all of us. If Lee was a Christian, he is no better than any other, nor is he worse. He is equally devoid of any merit apart from the finished work of Christ. As are we all.

Humanly (and therefore no-doubt sinfully) I wish he didn't identify as a Christian, in the same manner I wish Trump didn't identify as a Christian, because it is one more example of bad behavior for which our faith is held accountable and subjects its practitioners to charges of rank hypocrisy.

The temptation to make excuses for or ignore the sins of our heroes is great. I see it all the time with the Puritans. We give their theologians deserved kudos for their writings, but most of their admirers neglect to point out that the Puritans also shamefully persecuted many with different theologies. I have to be very careful with my own theological hero, Martin Luther, who wrote some of the most virulent (and violent) anti-Semitic writings ever penned. ^[2]

Is there really Original Sin in the cultural realm? I think so, but it is only speculation, because we always have an extant set of heroes who maintain (for now) their reputations. But can they survive indefinitely?

A Gedankenexperiment: Pick a hero. Any hero.  ^[3]  Now fast-forward two centuries to a brave new world in which all animals have legal rights. Zoos and pets are abominations. Eating animals is a class-1  felony with its own edition of Law and Order. (In the criminal justice system, carnivorous crimes are considered particularly disgusting...da-dum!). How will our current unsullied heroes, who may have been on the boards of zoos or Perdue, kept a household full of pets, and enjoyed the occasional Philly Cheese Steak be viewed?

More statues must fall.

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^[1] The closest I come is that my maternal grandfather was a Soviet Jew. He escaped to America and avoided any pogrom. I never identified as a Jew, but I like to point out that when the Bible talks about preserving a remnant among the Jews, that "I'm one of 'em!"

^[2] It is not, of course, just Christians who excuse their heroes. Darwin had some overtly racist writings that are often get-out-of-jail-excused as being misunderstood or anachronistic.

^[3] I resisted the chance to use MLK as an example of someone who is currently exemplary. It is not that I don't think he is, it is because I wanted to avoid the fad of a white man virtue signaling his admiration for MLK. Of course this footnote about virtue signaling is a form of meta virtue signaling. And that the previous sentence about meta virtue signaling is a form of meta meta virtue signaling. It's virtue signals all the way down.