One year is normally not such a long time in the life of an
adult American, but given how quickly the tempo of the national news cycle has increased
over the past eleven months and eleven days and how turbulent and perplexing the
reported content therein has been, 2017 has seemed more like a decade than a
mere annum. There has been just too much to ponder and remember from one day to
the next, let alone from one week to the next or from one month to another. The
most recent moment of presidential shock and disgust has frequently
overshadowed all such previous moments, and stories of disturbing gravitas
(e.g., Mr. Trump’s feud with a Gold-Star widow, the Las Vegas massacre, the
hurricanes and Puerto Rico’s ongoing crisis, the president’s repeated
accusations against President Obama, the president’s defense of white
nationalists, etc.) have faded. Mr. Trump’s “tornado of news-making has scrambled
Americans’ grasp of time and memory, producing a sort of sensory overload that
can make even seismic events—of his creation or otherwise—disappear from the
collective consciousness and public view” (Matt Blegenheimer, NYT, Dec. 30,
2017, A16).
At some point this past year—I don’t remember exactly when—I
gave up on Twitter. It got to be too distracting and disruptive, although I
still got bits and pieces of it (what else does one receive?) via
mainstream sources, which was more than sufficient. I also stopped the daily
visits to Facebook. Weekly peering, or even fortnightly, was enough—and then only to
see the latest photos from family and friends. In view of the administration’s
attacks against “the media,” I was motivated instead to renew my print and
digital subscription to “the failing New
York Times” and to take out digital subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal and The
Washington Post. These publications seem to be supervised by adults, have
more stable content (which thus helps to form longer-lasting memories), rely on vigorous fact-checking, and correct their errors. So my morning devotions continue to include praying while
reading these newspapers. On weekends, when there’s a little more time for such
petitioning, the meditation expands to include the Economist, The New Yorker,
and Der Spiegel.
Tonight I am grateful for memory, the capacity to learn from
the past and to recall lessons from the past, both one’s own past and that of
others (i.e., “history”). Santayana’s aphorism still rings mostly true: “Those
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (Kurt Vonnegut’s cynical response: “We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to
be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time
they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.”) As
a qualification to the Harvard professor's bon mot
and as an outright criticism of Vonnegut’s rejoinder, on this night I want to
carry forward Reinhold Niebuhr’s more hopeful, if also realistic view: God is “a divine judge who laughs at human
pretensions without being hostile to human aspirations.” History, I believe, does not repeat itself in endless cycles, one damn thing after another, so
to speak. It may echo itself more or less, especially given the evident
inevitability of humans to sin and be destructive, the instances of which do indeed
share striking resemblances to one another, but it doesn’t form a
never-ending circle, thank God, even if people regularly fail to learn from
their past mistakes and those of others. Despite human destructiveness, human
creativity blossoms, even (especially?) in times of political turmoil and
crisis. American political satire and comedy seem to be doing pretty well these
days.
Since, as the Christian believes, God has entered time and space in a
very particular way through the enfleshment of God’s Word in Jesus of Nazareth,
God has graciously disrupted the flow of history itself. There is thus the summons to hold sober hope
for the future, to trust that in the long run God's promise of ultimate justice and peace, of perfect mercy and love, will be fulfilled. God is in Christ reconciling the world to God! And that makes a
difference for one’s present and one’s future. “Be reconciled to God!” God
does not despise humanity; the divine Word became human for the sake of
humankind. That promise makes all the difference in the world--and in the presence of God. “Go, and sin no more….”
There is freedom and responsibility in these gracious imperatives: “Be reconciled to God” “Go, and sin no more.”
“History does not repeat, but it does instruct.” That is the
first line from Timothy Snyder’s important little book On Tyranny, published this past year by Tim Duggan Books. Snyder’s
twenty imperatives echo several lessons I have tried to impart in my course on “Christians
in Nazi Germany.” Snyder stresses the need to defend institutions (e.g.,
mainstream press, the justice system, public schools); to watch one’s language (words
have implications); to believe in truth; to criticize lies and propaganda; to
investigate (“Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative
journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the
internet is there to harm you…. Take responsibility for what you communicate
with others” [I would add: make regular use of fact-checking by more than one reputable,
self-correcting news organization]); to establish and maintain a private life;
to support charities and non-governmental organizations; to keep calm in times
of national crisis since tyranny arises “on some favorable emergency” (James
Madison).
In my course we also wrestle with the questions: why did so many
Christians support and defend Hitler? Why did so few Christians resist him and
his policies? Why have evangelical Christians supported tyrants and wanna-be
tyrants?
Another important book from 2017 is One Nation after Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned,
the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported (St. Martin’s Press), by E. J. Dionne,
Norman J. Ornstein, and Thomas E. Mann. Not only does it provide perceptive
insights into “the perils of Trumpism,” but it does summon one to active
engagement. Some of the same lessons that Snyder sets forth appear here, too:
the need to support mainstream print media (investigative, accountable, self-correcting
journalism); to practice and defend moral norms in our civic life (character counts; virtue matters); to criticize
authoritarianism and the fascist politics of the far right; to renew democracy;
to reform the American marketplace to provide opportunity and justice for all.
And lest you think that tyranny and fascism cannot take root
in the US, may I encourage you to read or re-read Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 prophetic novel, It Can’t Happen Here.
Tonight I am also grateful for the capacity to forget. Such an ability is a gift of divine grace. While we may not and should
not forget the past, that is, to dis-remember it intentionally or to trivialize it or ignore its terrible aspects or refuse to learn from it, God promises to forgive and forget our sinful past--and this should have consequences for how we treat our past and that of others. God’s own
forgiveness of our sins is connected with God’s promise to forget our sins and
remember them no more. “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own
sake, and I will not remember your sins” (Isa. 43.25). In the New Testament, too, God promises to be merciful toward sinners’ iniquities. “I will remember their
sins no more” (Heb. 8.12). That God promises to forgive and forget our past sins should have a bearing on how we treat the past, both our own and that of others. There is a kind of gracious forgetting involved in receiving God's forgiveness. In this way, we do not allow the past to dominate our present. We do now allow the past to overcome us and paralyze us. There is thus something promising about giving up
one’s past to God, of letting it go in repentance and faith, of letting the
past—all of it—go under, of letting it be buried under God’s grace and mercy, of
letting it become forgotten by grace. As dangerous and irresponsible as this notion could be, there is a kind of grace wrapped up in "forgetting" the past.
Remembering and forgetting are both essential aspects
of responsible Christian living.
