Erasing The Past
There is one constant among Dictators of all types from the Nazis to Communism to mohammeden totalitarianism.
They are afraid of history.
Every time a Communist Dictatorship takes over from the Cultural Revolution which burned all signs of the past to the purges of Stalin to the erasing from pictures in North Korea, it is one of the keys to Communism and all totalitarian states.
From erasing the history of Christianity and Judaism which dominated the Middle East by mohammdenism to the erasure of the past by the Nazi’s it is always the same.
Milan Kundera, who lived through the erasure of history when Communists took over Czechoslovakia, writes, “”the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”
Kundera’s great theme emerged from his experience of the annexation of his former homeland Czechoslovakia by the Soviets in 1948 and the process of deliberate historical erasure imposed by the communist regime on the Czechs.
As Kundera said:
“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history.
Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history.
Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.”
“Then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Deuteronomy 6:12
The Bible is a wonderful book - words written 3,000 years ago give us guidance for today.
How do we react to the “cancel culture”?
First, we recognize that it is the normal, well known and well practiced manner in which Communism and all totalitarian states take over countries.
Second, though, the Biblical principle is clearly explained for us by Moses who reminds us that the Jews were in slavery in Egypt and we are to never forget.
“Take care lest you forget . . . slavery” is the principle.
It couldn’t be more clear or more appropriate.
We are to remember slavery, because of the fact that it was God brought us out of it.
We are to remember, because if we do not remember we will repeat it, as George Santayana put it:
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
The whole point of remembering the past is so that we do not repeat it.
How clearer could it be?
As the “salt of the earth”, the time to stand has come.
As believers, it is no longer an option to be bystanders.
The very core of our faith is being challenged by the age old forces of evil who want more than anything else to erase the history of how America was formed - by Godly men and women who left totalitarian states to established a nation under God.
They hate that history!