Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.
— Deuteronomy 32:7-9 (KJV)
Over and over throughout the Old Testament, the fathers of the faith build altars to God to commemorate His acts of grace. The Israelites are commanded time and again to remember the acts of God in their history with songs, rituals and writings. In the New Testament, Christ commands His disciples to partake of His body and blood in remembrance of His sacrifice on the cross, as we’ve been discussing in great detail on this blog lately. But I don’t intend this piece as another essay on my opinions about the exact nature of the supper, but rather the Supper here serves as an example of the critical nature of remembrance for a godly people.
This is what makes Memorial Day an important holiday. Not because the day itself is particularly special or inventive. War memorials are a far older tradition than the federally designated day itself. Memorial Day is important because it is a reminder to look back, a reminder to revisit an important altar, a reminder to give thanks to God for His supplying and emboldening of the men who have given their lives throughout history for their countrymen. It’s an honoring of men who embodied that greatest of love, giving up their lives for their friends, who imitated Christ in counting the joy of service and sacrifice as greater than the pain of death.
Kenelm Digby in his Maxims of Christian Chivalry says, “Certainly the more men reflect upon the noble and joyous images presented in heroic history the more they will feel themselves confirmed in all those holy feelings which only can give them dignity and security.” He quotes Friedrich Shlegel expounding upon the ennobling nature of recognizing one’s “national poetry,” how recalling the heroism of one’s “noblest inheritance” enlarges the stakes of the present. I have lately been meditating on this sentiment quite a lot. I think these two men understood something our present generation, like every generation, is in danger of losing. We are all the product of our time and place and as such enjoy innumerable benefits of the foresight and moral fortitude of great ancestors. When we take time to deliberately consider the concrete facts of our own heritage, to examine the specific acts of nobility of the past that have benefited us today, it brings the present into radiant focus, sharpening the battle lines of good and evil as we look at our own lives, polishing the shine and uncovering the brilliance of the precious legacy each man is grafted into.
Neither you nor I chose to be born where we were, to whom we were, when we were, or how or why. Today’s Western sensibilities wish to discard this fact insofar as it undermines individual self-determinism. Trauma so prominently afflicts the younger generations of America today in part because the past proves our powerlessness. Its immutability demands we reckon with God and others. The future seems malleable and limitless, but history is written in stone. People are not islands with regard to our neighbors, and neither are we unaffected by those who lived before us, nor should we ignore those who will come after. Each person is a link in a chain across time.
Remembrance is important because it informs the present. When we live in light of the past, we can live in light of the future. An understanding of the goodness of our forebears should inspire us to be good forebears to our descendants. Now, generational trauma, inherited sin is not negated by this. Our forebears were also only human. But consider King David, the man after God’s own heart. He sinned gravely, but nonetheless God called him friend. Christ is our perfect example, but perhaps part of why Paul tells his brethren “Imitate me as I imitate Christ” is because Christ never practiced repentance. We have no example of Christ’s behavior when He sinned, because He didn’t. But perhaps the closest example we have is, when condemned upon the cross, bearing the guilt of the sins of others, Christ called out to His Father. David and Paul are not men worth imitating because they were perfect, but because they despised their imperfection. They repented, turned to God each time they sinned.
Our ancestors have not left us a legacy of perfection, but thankfully they didn’t have to. Christ already has. No matter what pain we suffer because of the sins of our fathers, there is healing in the wings of the Son of God. If we turn our noses up at the whole of the past because of its sins, perhaps we should not expect God to treat us any differently. “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven… For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again” (Luke 6:37, 38b KJV). If we are willing to scorn the good of those who went before us because of the bad, then we are willing to sacrifice their goodness in the view of our own self-righteousness, willing to sacrifice goodness for the sake of evil.
I’ve been told since I was very young that I have an old soul. Part of that may have been due to premature crotchetiness (incurable, sadly), but I think a nicer reason is that it has always been easy for me to get excited by history and inspired by war stories. In that sense, every boy has got something of an old soul. The challenge is to keep it old as he grows into a man. I have a particular fascination with the Civil and Revolutionary wars of the United States. I recall one historian saying something like, “The Revolution created America, the Civil War defined it.” G.K. Chesterton said, “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.” I’m moved to the verge of tears when I think of the kind of courage, the kind of stoutness of heart it takes to be more willing to die than to capitulate on one’s beliefs on what that creed should be. American-ness is not a genetic trait, it’s an ethos, it’s a spirit. In my view, it’s a prizing of the God-given dignity, worth, and responsibility of men and women.
I pray that those are all things I would rather die for than idly watch desecrated. I treasure that inheritance that others, men and women who never could have imagined how people like you and I would prosper because of them, have struggled and died for. By God’s grace I receive so much while deserving nothing. Pieces of our cultural poetry often get worn out because they are so commonplace — but, man, what I wouldn’t give to read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address with fresh eyes. We live in a land consecrated by sacrifice. We stand on ground once trod by excellent people doing gallant deeds. Much like the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” as Christ died to make men holy, they died to make men free.
Memorial is probably the most potent remedy to the meaninglessness that besets us as the days approach when we say “I have no joy in them.” Mundanity is an enemy of purpose. It is all too easy to become so engrossed in tedium as to lose sight of the grand drama we exist in. Gaze into the fiery determination of your ancestors, and the illusion of the insignificance of your everyday life will melt away. History enchants our lives. The streets of my town, the hills where I hike, the ground I tread every day, is infused with the magic of memory. One might say it’s as if spirits linger. Christians who read their Bibles should know that such a claim is mere superstition, but it is a commonplace one because we see the marks of those now gone in the world we inhabit. My local history is mystically enthralling to me because it gives some specific context for my life.
Don’t keep your appreciation for your life abstract, because your life isn’t abstract. As striking as the frequency is of God’s commands to remember, even more profound is His desire to remember. God executes remembrance of His people and His promises perfectly. We do not remember our God and His promises perfectly, hence, the need to memorialize. We are wont to forget. It’s the same reason Christians must participate in regular fellowship and revisit the same scriptures time and again. When a Pharaoh arose who did not remember Joseph, it went badly for Israel. When Israel forgot their God and His commands and the specific things He’d done for them, they fell into sin. Memorials are a device by which we can honor timeless principles even as time marches on. They are a bulwark against our human decay into waywardness. Each memorial stone and plaque is a cairn and signpost that, by marking the trail behind, points the way forward.
I cannot personally recommend highly enough taking time to deliberately honor the memory of the past. Today is a perfect day to do so, but any old day will do. Visit a local memorial if you can, look for old pictures of any family you have that served, listen to something patriotic or read an inspiring story. Pray for your country. If we remain steadfast in our individualist desire to control our own fates, then the past can only haunt us. By remembering how God’s grace has manifested itself in our lives in and by the lives leading up to them, the past can ennoble and energize us. By remembering how He held your destiny then, you can remember that He holds it now, and, for those whose faith is in Christ, that hope is so wonderful as to be constantly indispensable. You should care about the past because, every day that goes by, you’re a part of it, too. If you wish to live an honorable life, don’t start from scratch. Honor those who are worth honoring, and imitate them as they imitated Christ. Remember those who died even for people they’d never meet, yet in this way loved nonetheless.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. — John 15:13 (KJV)
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