The Good Old Days Weren’t That Good

Thinking historically will not come very easy. As much as we resurrect grandiose visions of the past, we cannot forget that the historic past is no different than our personal past. It’s just as replete with great memories as it is great blunders we’d rather forget. When we dare to look back, we often find a lot of things we’d rather ignore.

Evangelicals, I think, have a particular hard time with the past because we have an ingrained disposition for the future. By virtue of or religious (and social tradition, see below), we are futurists bound by our conversion (“testimony”) tradition and a predisposition toward the coming kingdom of God (the “not yet” aspect of our kingdom theology). Because we love to think about all God brought us from, we look only toward where we hope to go. And we believe that indeed if He’s coming back, we need only hope for that day when all this mess of sin and persecution we be taken care for good. Because all things are being made new in Christ, what is old is somehow no longer valid. So keep your head up, look ahead, and “forget what is behind.”

Indeed, I can hardly disagree with this on some level. The past for many of us does provoke depression, embarrassment, unease. The future always seems so much brighter. But let us not slip into the curse of future-mindedness.

Journalist David Brooks I think captures this kind of future mindedness in his recent book On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense. He writes, “historians point out that a tremendous strain of anxiety runs through US history, the nagging and sometimes panicked sense that we are failing to live up to our ideals and mission, that if we Americans fail, then that will be the most terrible failure in human history. This anxiety propels Americans to strive and reform perpetually.” Brooks goes on to suggest that “an American in thus imbued with a distinctive orientation: future-mindedness.” What can be said of Americans, of course, can usually be said of evangelicals. There are surmounting exceptions, of course, but this is no exception.

In some areas, though, it seems we do look back, but for the wrong reasons. I am often struck by how much moral majority preachers today (yes, they’re still around) romanticize our American and Christian past. As if the Declaration of Independence is somehow inspired. As if the 1940s were the Golden Age of Christianity, the Southern Baptist revival our greatest evidence of Christ’s coming kingdom. We just need to get back to “the good old days” when everyone was in church, the family in tact, and those pesky liberals were, I guess, more or less non-existent or just caged up where they supposedly belonged.

This is all, of course, naive at best.

The past is not perfect. Even the most noble and admirable Christian men and women, the ones we revere the most, were imperfect people living in a very imperfect world. The Apostle Paul actually has a lot to say about this, in fact.

Still, the Moral Majority and Preservationist theologians talk about the good old days when Christianity supposedly thrived. Surprisingly, of all the suposed “Golden Ages” they appeal to, they appeal to the Book of Acts most. But those days were just as complex, if not more complex, than our own. These days, though the times look bleak, remember that indeed, they alway have been. Though our cultural detractors have come at us with a vigorously de-constructing agenda, this is hardly anything new. And though it seems like we just need to get back to the simpler times, those times simply do not exist.

In Popular Culture and High Culture, Herbert Gans observes this historic fallacy at work among critics of popular culture, namely evangelicals. His critique is applicable, felt, and scathing. There is, he writes, “a regressive, pessimistic view of the historical process which postulates a continuous decline of the quality of life since the replacement of the small cohesive community and its folk culture by urban-industrial society and its popular culture. Such pessimism is not unusual among the downwardly mobile groups, for they exegerater their own loss of influence into a theory of overall social deterioation. However, all evidence suggests that the good old days were hardly good…” As Gans suggests, the grass is never that much greener on the other side. History is not perfect, and simply recreating it will still leave us empty.

Still our histories matter because they are the record of who we are and provide a framework for interpreting where we hope to go. We cannot revolutionize out of nothing nor can we build on something that refuses to look back. Though the past is difficult to resurrect, but it must be done. Not simply to revere a golden age we hope to go back to, but to think about the age we currently live in, one we hope will be better than before..even though it won’t be.

As theologian Karl Barth reminds us,

“There never was a golden age. There is no point in looking back to one. The first man was immediately the first sinner.

It is the Word of God which forbids us to dream of any golden age in the past or any real progress within Adamic mankind and history or any future state of historical perfection, or indeed to put our hope in anything other than the atonement which has taken place in Jesus Christ.” Barth, CD, 511.

Sin, or “not the way it’s supossed to be”

Being a Christian is the most freeing thing. Especially being a Christian who believes in the doctrine of oroginal sin. Best articulated as ‘that which is inconsistent with the will of God’ and ‘that which profanes God, displeases God, and offends the very nature of God’, the doctrine of sin is probably the most evident and apparent beliefs Christians hold, but one people still have the biggest problem accepting.

Well, what do Christians say about sin?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

By his sin Adam, as the first man, lost the original holiness and justice he had received from God, not only for himself but for all human beings. Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called “original sin”. As a result of original sin, human nature is weakened in its powers, subject to ignorance, suffering and the domination of death, and inclined to sin (this inclination is called “concupiscence”). Catechism of the Catholic Church, 416-418

From Lutheran perspective, consider this statement from the Augsburg Confession.

It is also taught among us that since the fall of Adam all men who are born according to the course of nature are conceived and born in sin. That is, all men are full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers’ wombs and are unable by nature to have true fear of God and true faith in God. Moreover, this inborn sickness and hereditary sin is truly sin and condemns to the eternal wrath of God all those who are not born again through Baptism and the Holy Spirit. Rejected in this connection are the Pelagians and others who deny that original sin is sin, for they hold that natural man is made righteous by his own powers, thus disparaging the sufferings and merit of Christ.

Or consider this, from Article VII in the Articles of Religion of the Book of Discipline of the Methodist Church,

Original sin stands not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.

My purpose in this post is not to say much about the articles themselves as it is simply to remind us all that they all point out something very important, very unavoidable. Even if you’re a non-Christian, you can’t get around this thing Christians call sin!

Face it, there is something wrong with the world, something wrong with ourselves, something wrong period. If you have ever ranted and raved about anything, you believe in sin. If you are unhappy with your job, you believe in sin. If you dislike particular individuals in politics or culture, you believe in sin. If you bemoan the current ecological imbalances of our planet, you believe in sin. If you hate anything or speak ill of anyone, you believe in sin.

I could go on and on, but basically, admit that if you find yourself pointing out error in anything and repulsed by injustices around you, you believe in sin. A knowledge of sin is actually the foundation from which we all build so many of our perspectives.

Indeed, there is something wrong and we want to see it fixed. Christians just happen to believe that it has been fixed, or better yet, is being fixed by God through Christ. The Christian church has always claimed this, in fact, though lately it seems we are experiencing a tremendous flux  in terms of how we articulate our doctrine of sin and redemption. Which means, we are in the process of re-articulating what we already believe but in a way that is more digestible to our cultural interlocutors. For all the spiritual cynics out there who long for the good old days of hell, fire, and damnation, rest assured that the church has adjusted, responded, and re-articulated Biblical doctrine for longer than any of us have been alive. And yes, this whole mess of sin has remained central to our witness in the world, even if we don’t articulate the word itself.

So how about simply referring to the fact that “things are just not what they are supposed to be?” but that we have no reason to lose hope because of what God has done through Christ. This is the route Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. takes in his book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin. And I think it’s a good one! This book, in fact, represents one of the best culturally conversant, nuanced ways of articulating the very real and potent reality of sin Christians have preached for years, without all the brimstone. Defining sin as any act “that displeases God and deserves blame” and evil as the “vandalism of God’s Shalom,” Plantinga traces the history of sin and its many theological implications, and brings us to the point of recognizing that this is one Christian doctrine everyone believes in and no one can argue with. There is something, indeed. Just don’t forget to flip the coin and admit that God has done something about it. Plantinga hopes his readers will do this, and I do to.

Yes, there is a vast disturbance at work in the world, a disruption in the divine plan that God is working to redeem. Whether evident through genocide, war, ecological imbalances, racism, poverty or whatever else makes our blood boil, God has taken and is taking action in history through Christ to redeem the world and establish His kingdom of justice, righteousness, and peace.

This is why I love being a Christian. I believe wholeheartedly that there is something wrong with the world , wrong with you, wrong with me; and thus, I am not usually all that surprised when things don’t go how I wish they would. That’s the nature of a fallen world. But even more so, I know that this world is not all there is so I have no real reason to lose hope. God has ordained that we all experience so much more than this world has to offer. Yet in the meantime, He is redeeming this world and brining forth His kingdom NOW. So I am also not surprised when good things do happen. That’s the work of God in the world.

History and Progress

“History is philosophy teaching by examples,” wrote Thucydides in The History of the Peloponnesian War, examples that form our greatest textbook for interpreting the present and hoping for the future. Though it is easy for us today living in a progressive culture to lose all sense of history, I suggest that knowledge of history is knowledge of self, and that our progress will never amount to much if we are unwilling even to know ourselves. Ignoring the past compromises progress because void of a historic conscioness, we will lose ourselves in our progress. A through-going study of history can, in fact, foster a magnitude of repentance and fuel the flight from despair to revolution to hope, especially for evangelical Christians like myself believing, living, and hoping in these interesting times.

Travesties by Tom Stoppard

One of the most formative works I have ever run across is Travesties by British playwright Tom Stoppard. I first read it as an undergraduate at Texas A&M after one of my favorite professors, Dr. Michael Greenwald, recommended it to me. For some reason, it just stuck with me and ever since reading it, I have thought about its many implications.Now, do understand that this post is not really about Travesties itself, nor is it much of a tribute to the author himself. I have just always been so heavily inspired by some of the questions it raises for me that I figured it would serve as a good locus for reflection.

Travesties is a very unique work. In it, Tom Stoppard imagines a meeting in Zürich, Switzerland between three important historical figures of the 20th century, all of whom did actually live in Zürich around 1917 but probably never actually met: Lenin, Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, and beloved Irish exile and novelist James Joyce. The play actually centers, though, on the recollections of another man named Henry Carr, who attempts to recall the facts of this alleged meeting but eventually proves that he is unable to separate fact from fiction. (For a useful summary, visit www.litenc.com).

In case you’re curious, this is one of Travesties‘ more memorable quotes:

Great days…Zürich during the war. Refugees, spies, exiles, painters, poets, writers, radicals of all kinds. I knew them all…I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. Firstly, you’re either a revolutionary or you’re not, and if you’re not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can’t be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary … I forget the third thing.” (98-99)

I have always found Stoppard’s exploration of the many contours of fact and fiction remarkable. Also, his treatment of history and his historical imagination is fascinating. It’s all just so creative, daring, audacious, and inspiring. I often wonder if, as we write our own histories, an imagination like Stoppard’s could become our own. Not that we would all become historical relativists, but that we would let the past fuel our imagination as we look to the future. I think in many ways this is Stoppard’s greatest achievement. He allowed history to inspire a great work. May an imagination like Stoppard’s inspire my own…our own.

Indeed, may all our thinking and all our hopes for progress be fueled by history and molded by historical texts and their intersection with our contemporary discourse. I hope the thoughts and questions history raises confront us, challenge us, and (again I hope) lead us to new avenues of thought, action, and….yes, imagination.