October 13 is Columbus Day (a
Monday holiday in the USA )
because on October 12, 1492
Christopher Columbus landed his ships, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa
Maria , on the Bahaman
Islands Western Hemisphere and the
Eastern. Before he died ships were
traveling annually between Spain
and the many islands in the Caribbean Sea . But during his lifetime, and now in the 21st
century, Columbus was a
controversial figure. He was a brilliant
navigator and visionary but a poor administrator and governor. He made four trips to the New
World but returned to Spain
on the last one as a prisoner in chains.
(He was immediately released upon arrival.) Today his legacy is noted in the name of a
country in South America , a province in Canada ,
a university in New York , many
towns in the USA ,
and a major street in Grand Forks . But he is also seen as a villain of history in
beginning European domination of the Western Hemisphere ,
bringing European diseases that decimated the population of the New
World , and allowing cruel treatment of the native
populations. Minneapolis
has removed Columbus Day from the city calendar. My friend in South
Dakota told me that in his state it has been renamed
“Native American Day” to celebrate the rich heritage of the aboriginal peoples
of America .
All
of this reminds us that the life of every human being is a complex combination
of good and bad, strength and weakness, high ideals and sordid actions. Columbus
often wrote that he wanted to convert the native people he encountered to
Christianity and brought priests on the ships he sailed, but then he also
followed the custom of the day and enslaved those who opposed him causing many
of the priests to turn against him. It
is a complicated and complex picture.
Another
active traveler who sought to bring Christ to the nations was St.
Paul . We call
him a saint for his great evangelistic work for the gospel, but he had his
struggles as well. In Romans 7:21 he wrote about his ethical dilemma: “So I
find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost
self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and
making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me
from this body of death? Thanks be to
God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
None
of us will ever be as celebrated as St. Paul or as vilified as Christopher
Columbus, but we all struggle to do the right thing and often find that “evil
lies close at hand.” This struggle to
say and do the right thing will continue as long as we live, but we can read
the written Word of God and call on the guidance of the Holy Spirit when we try
to discover what is right and to do what is right. Above and beyond that, we can rest assured
that because of Christ, God “does not deal with us according to our sins, nor
requite us according to our iniquities.” (Psalm 103:10) but when we come to
Christ “we find mercy and grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16)
This
Columbus Day not many children will recite the poem “in fourteen hundred ninety
two Columbus sailed the ocean
blue,” for it has gone out of fashion, but we can remember what a complex
fellow he was. And we can remember that
no matter what a complex mixture of good and evil we are God still loves
us. We can ask him to guide us on the
ocean of life, to protect us in the storms, and at the end to bring us to the safe
harbor of life. Put your trust today in
him who walked on water and calmed the seas.
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