by Chris Alexion, Copyright October 28, 2006, all rights reserved. 340 views
Ecclesiastes pulls the rug out from under autonomous human reason, and one of these slippery footholds is boring, secular, naturalistic history. But we shouldn't ignore the past simply because it's incomplete. If we look at history only as a cyclical repitition of events or a collection of boring facts about dead people, we'll miss out on the richness of this discipline. Both testaments emphasize the importance of history as a record of God's dealings with His people.
Joshua, for instance, commanded a representative of each tribe to take a stone from the Jordan's riverbed and build a monument nearby, so that when the next generation would see the stones and ask, "What does this mean?", their fathers could tell them the story of how God parted the river (Josh. 4:19-24). Psalm 78 recounts the whole history of God's dealings with Israel, from their time in Egypt through their captivity in Babylon. And in the New Testament, Stephen begins his sermon to the Jews with a history of God's call on Abraham.
But God's most momentous work in history was an invasion. In the Incarnation, the eternal broke into our world, turning it upside-down, breaking the "hamster wheel" of time and giving history a climax. Biblical history isn't a circle; it's a story.
It's often said that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But what's often left out is the more positive flip-side: When we do pay attention to history, we're clued in to how God has moved in past times and how we should live, work, love, and fight in ours. By remembering King Harry and St. Crispin's Day, we learn about courage and how to pass it to our children. By stepping out of the "now-fixation" of the newspapers and cable networks, we have a chance to bring an eternal perspective to bear on our times, letting us see our own cultural blind spots.
But before we get cocky about the power of history, we should remember that this gift, like all others, comes by grace and is dependent on God's will. While we ought to humble ourselves and learn from the past, we can really only do this by grace. We have to remember God, but only God can cause us to remember. That's why Rudyard Kipling phrased his famous "Recessional" as a prayer:
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine;
Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget. . . .
Far called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire.
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Ninevah and Tyre.
Judge of the nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget–lest we forget.
Note: Again, I'm indebted to Bill Einwechter for much of this post.
-----No comments yet.