ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
May 21, 2022
You wonder how people can forget the past so quickly. A few weeks back, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos was elected president of the Philippines. He is the son of the former dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. Some may remember his wife, Imelda, and all of her shoes. They went into exile, though not before gouging the country of millions of dollars. Now I’m a firm believer that people can change and that children are not necessarily like their parents. But the propaganda machine in the Philippines has been extraordinary in recent years, shifting the narrative and even rewriting history. I watched interviews from a few weeks before the recent election, and children had been taught in school how wonderful the economy was during the brutal dictatorship of Ferdinand (though no one uses the words ‘brutal’ or ‘dictator’). The children spoke of how everyone was rich. The school curriculum has been modified to leave out rather important parts of history, and, of course, social media has been the tool of choice since the son of the former dictator got involved in politics back in the early 2000’s. This is not your traditional political spin where the truth has its rough edges smoothed. This is a remarkable and well organized whitewash of history.
The Prophet Isaiah reminded his readers to remember the former things. The Book of Judges is the painful story of people forgetting their past and repeating their mistakes over and over again. Some people believe it is important to forget the painful parts of our individual and corporate lives, but forgetting only guarantees a reoccurrence of those painful pieces. Just recently, I said out loud to a group of folks, “Why can we not learn from our past?” There were a lot of bewildered faces, yet as I was driving home later that day, it hit me – many people do not know their history. They didn’t learn it, they don’t remember it, and they won’t let a propaganda machine rewrite it. As followers of Jesus, the grace we receive frees us to own the fullness of our stories, even the unpleasant, embarrassing, or painful parts. We can own the stories and reflect on them honestly without being defined by them. I’m not suggesting it is always easy. Far from it! But falling into the same hole time and time again is even more painful, and often damaging to those around us.
May the grace you provide, O Lord, be the means by which I am able to be honest and authentic when it comes to my history and the larger history of my religion, my nation, and my species. Pieces of that history contain both good and bad, life-giving and life-taking elements. Though I cannot change the past, it is a knowledge of the past that will help provide alternative options for the future. Amen.
