by J. R. Grover
A little-known monument on the outskirts of Plymouth, MA, casts the vision We the People need. As the country embarks through the hazy abyss of time, embattling worldviews contend for her helm. One seeks to point her toward the shores of the idolatry of self, where each individual is believed to have the authority of determining his gender, sexual preferences, morals, and even time of death through assisted suicide. Since obeisance to the self knows no bounds, it is the duty of the state, of America, to kowtow to the individual’s wishes through means of state-funded practices like abortion, transgender surgeries, medical-assisted suicide, and forms of socialism.
People critique this direction laid out before them by the hyper-individualistic compass, but can they provide a richer vision? Can they steer the country toward more prosperous shores?
As we should, we rely on the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution to ascertain a greater resolve that will keep this nation of the people, by the people, and for the people from perishing from the earth. Yet, one of the most illuminating beacons of this country's moral and spiritual foundations stands largely forgotten in Plymouth, and we would bless ourselves to bring it back into national sentiment.
The National Monument to the Forefathers, completed in 1889, rises 81 feet into the air, and what she symbolizes makes her a lighthouse that can guide this country for its next 250 years. The monument depicts a hierarchy of virtues centered on Faith, depicted as a lady surrounded by the personifications of Morality, Law, Education, and Liberty. Such symbolism reflects the conviction widely shared by the Pilgrims and early Americans that liberty is not self-sustaining but rather depends upon law, law upon morality, and morality upon the transcendent truths rooted in faith.
This lady Faith emanates not from vague religion but from biblical Christianity as she points heavenward with her right hand while clutching a Geneva Bible in her left. She rightly stands as the central figure to which the others rest in her shadow. Morality, the first of the symbols surrounding Faith, holds on to the 10 Commandments, and she has the statues of “Prophet” and “Evangelist,” the harbingers of Christian belief, by her sides. Law, who follows the standards of Morality and speaks to the self-governing, covenantal nature of America’s government, has the symbolic statues of “Justice” and “Mercy” to his right and left. Next comes Education, who holds an open book in her lap. To her right is “Youth,” which portrays a mother holding her child’s hand in love and devotion in nurturing the next generation, while to her left is “Wisdom,” an old man pointing toward the Bible to symbolize accumulated moral insight and experience. Finally, as the product of all that which precedes him, comes Liberty. He sits next to “Tyranny Overthrown” and “Peace,” both which speak to the Pilgrim’s desire to worship God freely as a reposed people.
This monument offers more than another tourist attraction. It gives the vision to which we must aspire, just as our forefathers did. What we don’t need is to draw a new set of blueprints for the next 250 years but rather to cleave to the old ones that built this nation and fix them once again as our North Star. We must never retreat from our Christian heritage, cease to speak our biblical morals into the public square, and support the work of our local churches, for such is the deep fountain that has nourished the morals, laws, education, and liberties of this nation.
We have no time to fool ourselves. The other worldview of ultimate self authority strongly contends to steer the country’s rudder in dictating the morality, legal system, educational programs, and liberties of the American citizenry. But its central statue is not a faith pointed toward the transcendence of the one true God as revealed through the pages of Scripture but a belief revolving around the illusionary authority of self. This worldview will be a part of the next 250 years of this nation's history, but so will ours. And like our forefathers, we must never surrender it.
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