day no. 15,264: history as our inheritance

"We are indignant at the thought that our fathers, long since gone from the scene, could possibly have any kind of authority over us. We want to think that the placement of individuals in history is nothing more than a random number sequence, with no authority given to those who came before. But the Lord of all history placed them there, with the command that they leave an inheritance to us. Our duty is to receive that inheritance, build upon it, and become in turn a blessing to our covenantal grandchildren." - Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth

Tradition does not hold every veto, but it should retain a vote.

"No one should ever be allowed to tear down any fence unless they could explain why it had been erected in the first place." - G.K. Chesterton

Our ancestors are often marginalized, discriminated against and boxed out from voting in our current affairs based simply on the unfortunate fact fact that they are dead.

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” - G.K. Chesterton

Landmarks and boundary markers were not arbitrarily placed. Someone thought it through using the best that they knew to do. It doesn't stand to reason that our reasons for wanting to move them are anymore wise than theirs were merely because ours happen to be more contemporary. Things do not become cumulatively better merely because they are more current.

Proverbs 22:28
Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set.

Proverbs 23:10
Do not move an ancient boundary stone or encroach on the fields of the fatherless

Deuteronomy 27:17
Cursed is he who moves his neighbor's boundary stone. And let all the people say, 'Amen!'

Deuteronomy 19:14
Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.

Job 24:2
Men move boundary stones; they pasture stolen flocks.

We are not bound to keep everything exactly as it always has been, but we must at least consider why it was set where it was before we move it to where we'd prefer it to be. If we make a regular habit of thrashing our ancestors, our descendants, not surprisingly, will do the same to us.

"A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants." - Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay

"People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors." - Edmund Burke