While there were many shootings in the city of Charleston, SC in 2015, only one will be forever known as the “Charleston Massacre.¹” An event this horrific, an act this vile, leaves most of us feeling helpless to respond in any meaningful way. That urge to do something -anything- is understandable after national tragedies. It also often leads us to overreact and do things that satisfy this urge but have negative long-term consequences².

One of the voices leading the charge for the “we must do something” movement is Comedy Central’s daily news anchor, Jon Stewart. The “something” he suggests is the nationwide removal of all Confederate flags, streets named for Confederate soldiers, and Civil War memorials honoring the Confederate dead. Several segments of his nightly broadcasts have gone viral as viewers excitedly favorite and retweet his monologues. His central thesis seems to be:

I. Every supporter of the Confederate States was, directly or indirectly, supporting treason and slavery.
II. The evils of treason and slavery outweigh any good in or done by those people.
III. People who supported the Confederate States should not be honored in any public way.
IV. People who support or honor those who supported the Confederate States are morally bankrupt, sadly ignorant, or themselves racists.

I, too, like to talk about things in categories of black or white. I think we are all this way and that’s why we are more comfortable with black and white than grey.³ This love for black and white fits nicely with our “we must do something” urge, and the result is that we make very quick, absolute, and unwise judgments about what to do. The problem with taking Stewart’s suggestions about street names and memorials is that the logic used in support of his decision also disqualifies every other human role model in the world’s history. God, human nature, the fall, redemption and common grace are easily organized under the appropriate banner of good or evil. Each moment of human history, and each individual in it, however, are not tied to only one, but to a blend of these complex realities in varying measures.

There has never been a human who is perfectly good⁴. Even the most evil people in the history of the world did some things that were not evil⁵. It is safe to assume that at various points of Hitler’s life, he perpetrated acts of kindness, love, or generosity. All humans must be viewed as existing in various shades of grey. Certainly, there exists a vast spectrum of shades -some almost appearing entirely black- but they are all grey. Stewart acknowledges this point in one of his monologues. Unfortunately, he takes an important concern and dismisses it with an absurd example:

“It’d be like saying you support flying the Nazi flag because you’re proud of their robust anti-smoking agenda. That wasn’t really their thing.” – Jon Stewart

A much less ridiculous form of the tension he mocks exists in every case where a human is to be honored. We honor people all the time, in all sorts of ways, yet these people all are and do some measure of evil. If we are to honor people, we are to honor the imperfect. Stewart jumps to the example of Hitler, pointing out that it would be absurd to honor anything good in him. I agree, but acknowledge that my judgment – while both reasonable and socially acceptable – is subjective. I’ve made the judgment call that the great evils he did outweigh the value in acknowledging any good. He exists at an extreme end of the moral spectrum, making the judgment easier and not subject to significant moral outrage. What happens when the one you’re judging has a little more white in their grey? That’s when the judgments become increasingly more difficult, and when we will begin to encounter people who judge differently.

These judgments are also significantly impacted by the particular time and culture in which they are made. What Stewart and others refer to as “obvious” was anything but for millions of people living in a different time and/or place. Modernity has brought much progress, but we often confuse scientific, technological, and educational progress with that which is moral. Moral progress is very real too. By in large, American culture is more sensitive to issues of equality, and thus less overtly racist⁶ today than 50 or 150 years ago. This is moral progress, but that declaration can quickly lead us astray. We cannot draw from this that we are morally superior to all other cultures in all other times on issues of race. Neither are we, on the whole, morally superior to those who lived in this country in 1860 or 1960 simply because we have progressed on this one issue. Here, we have moral progress. Elsewhere, we have moral decline.

I bring this up because there is a temptation to judge potential heroes primarily by the moral cause de jour. Because we have a greater appreciation now for the evils of racism, we treat this as an obvious moral standard by which every hero, at any point in history can be glorified or condemned. If we practice this consistently, we will soon find ourselves able only to admire a small subset of our own contemporaries. We will not honor, study, or even acknowledge those who lived before us if their legacy is stained by filth⁷ no longer acceptable to modern sensibilities.

I know of two Virginians in American history with quite a bit in common. They both were men of astonishingly high character. They both were great motivators and leaders of people. They both owned, and purchased, slaves. They both led armies in a rebellion against the central government. They both freed the slaves in their possession without being legally compelled to do so. Their words and writings suggest that they both believed whites were somehow superior to blacks.⁸ These men are George Washington and Robert E. Lee, and their lives are shades of grey.

William T. Sherman is a great hero of many because he took the bold steps necessary to ensure the outcome of the American Civil War and, in some measure, secure national freedom for all slaves. The means by which he accomplished this end include the murder of innocents and non-combatants, unnecessary destruction of civilian property, and a permissive attitude toward abuse, including rape. His life is a shade of grey.

Moses stood up to one of the largest slave-holders in human history resulting in a great exodus of freedom for the Israelites. He was also a murderer. Harry Truman, Susan B. Anthony, Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Mead, Walt Disney, Sandra Day O’Conner, Martin Luther, Margaret Thatcher, Steve Jobs: lives that were shades of grey. Some things to admire. Some acts of evil, great and small. Sometimes we will find mass agreement on whether or not a person is worthy of honor. Many times we will not. Only arrogance to the point of absurdity could convince a person that they are able to make these judgements infallibly, and that those judgements should bind the conscience of all other people on earth.

We can, hopefully graciously, debate with one another the relative wisdom of those choices or the criteria by which we’ve made them. We can encourage one another to think more seriously and carefully about their shortcomings. We can persuade one another to acknowledge their positive contributions. What we must not do, is to praise Stewart’s declarations that people whose judgments are different are morally bankrupt. Can the judgments be scrutinized? Absolutely! This is categorically different than the trail he is blazing.

His approach has the unfortunate effect of attempting to erase history. Of course, we can’t⁹ erase all of it, so we selectively erase. We pick and choose which filth is acceptable to us, bringing the acceptably filthy to the fore (Washington) and wiping the others from the pages of history (Lee). Which has the right to remain in our history books, monuments and street names? To keep both is to acknowledge, and even honor, heroes whose legacies include moral filth. To remove only one results in the denial both of the facts of history and the moral realities of the times. To remove both – the logical conclusion of this approach – is entirely unacceptable.

These choices are really, really hard. These discussions should be conducted with humility, kindness and grace. Humor is helpful, but mockery and feigned outrage are not. We all feel helplessly outraged in light of the evil perpetrated in Charleston, just as others have felt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and many other dark historical moments. However small or large, the evil within Dylann Roof shares common threads with the moral filth of many of our forefathers. We must call that filth evil, because it is. When we see examples of that kind of filth in the lives of our heroes we must continue to call it what it is even as we examine ourselves for it. But calling for the removal of all the street names, monuments and buildings honoring each of those heroes lacks both historical perspective and self-awareness. Human history, including my and your participation in it, is what it is: filthy. Unless we want to try to erase it all, we’re going to have to accept a world where even those we admire have real filth with which we must reckon.

1. On the evening of June 17, 2015, a mass shooting took place at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States. Nine people were killed, including the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney; a tenth victim survived. The congregation is one of the United States’ oldest black churches and has long been a site for community organization around civil rights.
   
   Police arrested a suspect, later identified as 21-year-old Dylann Roof, in Shelby, North Carolina, the morning after the attack. The United States Department of Justice is investigating the possibility that the shooting was a hate crime or an act of domestic terrorism, among other motives. Roof has been charged with nine counts of murder by the State of South Carolina. If convicted, Roof could face a sentence of death or thirty years to life in prison. A website apparently published by Roof included a manifesto detailing his beliefs on race, as well as several photographs showing him posing with emblems associated with white supremacy. Roof’s photos of the Confederate battle flag triggered debate on its modern display. Source: Wikipedia ↩︎
2. See Wikipedia on “The Patriot Act” ↩︎
3. Sure, we appeal to the grey when defending our own choices. Nothing helps us appreciate nuance, complexity, exceptions and edge cases like making a case for our own immoral,selfish, or rude behaviors. When we remove these situations of self-justification from the mix, it’s safe to say we strongly prefer to speak in absolutes. ↩︎
4. We will exempt Jesus of Nazareth from the discussion. In him was only good. He is, of course, the only perfect model for humans, but Scripture also teaches that imperfect humans can be honored, admired, and imitated. ↩︎
5. In the world of theology, this is referred to as common grace. God enables people who have no goodness in them to perform good for the general benefit of the world. ↩︎
6. By no means is this a suggestion that racism today is an insignificant issue. ↩︎
7. Make no mistake, filth is filth, and we do not make excuses for it. ↩︎
8. This was at least true for some portion of each man’s life. ↩︎
9. don’t want to ↩︎