We must recall struggles and missteps of history

Remember you were brought

“out of the house of slavery” (Deuteronomy 6:12). Remember your “forty years in the wilderness” (Deuteronomy 8:12). Remember everything and maintain your traditions (1 Corinthians 11:2). “Remember my chains” (Colossians 4:18). “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).

I have prayerfully and quietly pondered the damage that is being done to our children — including my first-grader and fifthgrader — through our governor calling on schools to forget and neglect history willfully in banning books and the honest retelling of the Black struggle in America. As a child, I remember reaching into a classroom library and finding a book on Rosa Parks and reading “Two Tickets to Freedom.” I remember learning to remember things that happened decades and centuries before my birth.

Our children are being robbed of the opportunity to allow their curiosity to teach them these stories. They aren’t being saved from shame. They are being robbed of their role in making right the wrongs of the past. Participating in redeeming and transforming communities is one of the highest expressions of our collective free will. Remembering hard truths, harsh realities and uncomfortable facts is a Biblical first step in transforming individuals and society.

Our children are being denied access to inspiring stories of heroes who, despite adversity, discrimination, and systematic oppression, contributed to the best of what makes America great, our ability to thrive, persevere, throw off shackles of oppression, and prosper despite the pain. It is the American way to respond to oppression by holding on to our inalienable rights to freedom and self-determination.

Remembering adversity, suffering and pain is a sacred duty, responsibility, and commandment. I agree with our governor that remembering an honest retelling of history will make people feel uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable is disorientating and offers us an opportunity to reorient ourselves. It is a holy and right thing for children to ponder their place in society, not as perpetrators of oppression but as brokers of transformation, grace, mercy, and reconciliation.

As a Christian, I commit myself to remembering, repenting, and allowing Christ to transform me and work in me and others to transform society to be more just and equitable. We must resist the Florida Department of Education’s command to forget and embrace the Lord’s command always to remember. We must never forget and actively remember the oppression faced by all in our society, from Black America to those who came to this country to escape oppression and embrace freedom.

We have a sacred duty to remember. We must be willing to remember the adversity and suffering that the heresy of racism and the crime of slavery has inflicted country and society. We must be willing to do this in the same way that we romanticize and celebrate the suffering and oppression our white European forebearers faced in their homelands before emigrating to the Americas.

History engages the best and worst of our shared human experience. Erasing history or prohibiting the shared remembrance of experiences shared by some community members is an affront to human dignity. All human suffering and adversity should be remembered and honored, even when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable.

It is through the mystery of suffering and remembrance that repentance and change transform individuals and society. Denying and rejecting truth only serves to destroy, pervert, and decay our society. Only through honest debate and intellectual introspection of our past can our shared society mature and truly leave behind destructive behaviors that belong in the past.

“Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you” (Deuteronomy 32.7).

Remembering adversity, suffering and pain is a sacred duty, responsibility, and commandment.