South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley called today for the removal of the Confederate flag on the State House grounds in Columbia, five days after the racially-motivated killing of nine black church goers.

“It’s time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds,” she said. “We are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer.”

I applaud Governor Haley. She made a correct and moral decision. And she expressed herself with eloquence and diplomacy towards all South Carolinians.

https://youtu.be/msmy-KAD6S4?t=3m53s

I had written about this Sunday, and had expressed my opinion that the flag should be removed if desired by the people of South Carolina. At one time I would’ve been on the side of those who supported the flag, but when reading how in recent history it was resurrected as a symbol of Jim Crow, white supremacy, and segregation by Southern Democrats in the early ’60’s, I felt it had become too tainted to remain. How could I honor Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy of judging people by their character rather than their skin color, and yet endorse this flag?

As a Christian, I am called by Christ to practice moral behavior, even if it is not to my advantage to do so. As a sinner, I fall short of that goal.

Doing the moral thing can be small, as when some Christmases ago a family member found he was undercharged by an inexperienced clerk. He contacted the store, and it cost him $150, but it was the right thing to do.

Doing the moral thing can cost lives and freedom. At the start of World War II in 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned to Germany from safety in New York City in order to resist the Nazi party and join a Jewish rescue action. He was hanged at Flossenburg prison by the Nazis in 1945. Likewise, Corrie ten Boom, her father, and her sister harbored Jews in their Dutch home; they were caught and imprisoned. Only Corrie survived. And then there was the late Miep Gies, who hid Anne Frank and her family in the “Secret Annexe” in Amsterdam, only to be discovered by Dutch police working with the occupying Germans.

Sarah Palin chose to give birth to a baby with Down Syndrome, despite the legal opportunity she had to abort her child. In the Sudan, Mariam Ibrahim was nearly executed by that country when she refused to recant her Christian faith.

And in Charleston, the family members of those massacred by the racist gunman forgave — forgave! — him for his crime against their loved ones. In the Christian faith, there is hardly a higher moral calling than to ask, “Father forgive them.”

If the flag had been long removed, would it have stopped this crime? No. With the flag gone, will racial tensions stop? No. It is symbolic at best. But in these times of Ferguson and Baltimore, it is one baby step towards easing and healing. It has to start somewhere. And it was the moral thing to do.