Yesterday, on the 17th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, I tweeted this:
I was thinking about that #NeverForget hashtag and wondering just what, exactly, we are supposed to remember. I think the instinct is to remember the attack itself along with the devastating personal losses along with the many acts of courage displayed that day and in the following weeks. We, the American people, are being urged to remember a day when we became victims of terror.
But – and I suppose this is a distinctly Christian concern – I wonder what else in our collective past is not so regularly brought before our memories. To only remember having been attacked while rarely discussing, or even acknowledging in some cases, our aggressions toward others seems to instill a selective, and sick, memory. I say this is a Christian concern because while Christians are certainly concerned about justice on behalf of the aggrieved, we are also always aware of our own complicity in someone else’s harm. That is, we are a people whose very identities are founded on a shared confession of captivity to sin and allegiance to a Savior.
A society that is intentional only about remembering its – real and tragic – histories of being victimized and not the damage inflicted by our aggressions isn’t healthy. Neither can it, in any accurate way, be thought of as Christian.
David W. Swanson 