Why Lidl’s removal of the cross is a grotesque and blundering insult

Sep 7, 2017 by

by J.John, Christian Today.

[…] Now as someone who is both Greek and a Christian this amazes and annoys me.

First, I find it insensitive. As many people will know, the Greeks have for over a thousand years taken pride in being the heroic defenders of Christian Europe’s south-eastern border. You may disagree with that role and that pride but, trust me, it is a fundamental part of the Greek psyche.

In this culturally embattled corner of the Mediterranean the issue of whether a building is capped by a cross or crescent is no light matter. Here men and women still regularly overlook five hundred years of history to refer to Istanbul as Constantinople. Here, in living memory, the unfortunate tension between cross and crescent has erupted in bitter bloodshed in Cyprus and the horrid Balkan war of 1991–99. To remove the cross from the image of these buildings is a grotesque and blundering cultural insult.

And as an aside, I can’t help wondering if the marketing geniuses at Lidl have noticed that the cross plays a major part in quite a number of European flags, not least the Union Jack. Are these to be removed as well? One of the problems of rampant political correctness is that in the effort to stop one offence it almost inevitably ends up creating others. There is nothing quite so inclined to create offence as political correctness trying to erase it.

Second, I find it troubling. This removal of crosses echoes the recent debates in the United States about whether to keep or topple statues of Confederate war heroes. Extreme political correctness demands that all that is offensive about the past be erased. This, of course, is impossible; history is a deep-grained reality that is not easily eliminated. It is also perilous; history teaches lessons and to ignore our past is to choose to walk blindfold into the future.

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