This isn't the first time that there has been a flap about the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina. I remember back around middle or high school, there was controversy about taking it off the Statehouse dome in Columbia. I remember one class in which we had a formal debate about the flag. I spoke for the group in favor of taking it down. I never understood why the battle flag was there.
Frankly, I didn't think that there would ever be much discussion about removing it from the Statehouse grounds. It has always seemed like there were too many people in the state fervently in favor of keeping it. So it was a pleasant surprise to me when there was bipartisan movement to discuss its removal. This has led to inevitable backlash. I have seen Confederate flags pop up on houses that I drive by on the way to work. I have seen Facebook posts asserting that we have gotten the flag and the Civil War itself all wrong.
I could tackle these arguments. Believe me, there is nothing that my history nerd self would enjoy more than dismantling the argument that the Civil War was not at all about slavery. But this is a sensitive time and a sensitive issue for people. I don't want to argue. Instead I want to point out something quite simple that I have believed since I debated about that flag many years ago.
Jesus said that we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Despite whatever attachment one might have to a flag, however he or she may see that symbol, the Confederate battle flag represents centuries of cruelty to the vast majority of our African-American brothers and sisters. It is a reminder of slavery, Jim Crow laws, anti-civil rights battles, lynchings, and racism in all of its forms. Those feelings are not the result of some sort of conspiracy. They are valid and they are a stain upon our nation's history.
So why would we ever want to fight for something that causes our neighbors pain? Why would we want to celebrate a symbol that to many represents an ugly past and a present still fraught with difficulties? If we were in the shoes of our neighbors then how would we feel? When we defend a banner at their expense, are we truly loving them?
I realize that this argument is not incredibly sophisticated and that, technically, the "Jesus said so" line only applies to Christians (though I think we can agree that his ethics here are spot on). Yet it is my conviction that if there is something that hurts my neighbor or something that reminds them of centuries of oppression then that is something that I should not celebrate.
As a Christian, I could never support the Confederate flag in good conscience because I am called to love my neighbor. And love, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 13:5, does not insist on its own way. No matter how good a justification one may think they have for flying the flag, love concedes if that banner hurts their neighbor. And that banner has, it does, and it will. That flag has been a painful symbol to our brothers and sisters for nearly a century and a half. I hope that we can love them more than a banner.