From the Pastor's Study
From the Pastor’s Study
Realistic Past Gives a Courageous Future
April 5, 2023
Recently, I found this quote in something I was reading: “We must look at the past realistically so that we can face the future courageously.”[i] We have a tendency to look at the past selectively, and there are always those who focus on “the good old days,” the days which seem to us to have been better than the present. When we talk about “the good old days,” it’s likely that we are forgetting some of the more difficult things that happened back then. I know someone who, in nearly every conversation, refers back to the time when he was in his late teens and early twenties as being so much better than now. While he remembers the good times with his friends, I suspect that he also forgets the insecurities, uncertainties and angst that a young person faces.. It is sometimes difficult to look at the past realistically, for we are (sometimes intentionally) forgetful.
If we don’t remember what happened, if we look at the past with rose-coloured glasses, we may not be equipped to deal with the future. If the past looks rosy, and if the present isn’t as good, if we extrapolate what we see as a trend into the future, it logically follows that what lies ahead will be worse, or so we might think.
A number of years ago I was part of a leadership team that was involved in prison ministry in a medium-security prison. The guys who attended the service which we led were seeking to rehabilitate themselves and many of them had become followers of Jesus Christ or were returning to their Christian roots. (It was somewhat unsettling at one of these services to meet a former member of my church who had been convicted of multiple crimes in my home town.) One of the songs that the prisoners loved to sing had these words, “Jesus, you know, if you look here below, it’s worse now than then.” This song implies that the past was better than the present, and it’s harder for us now.
That might not be true. In fact, it probably isn’t. We may have cleaned up the past a little to make it look better, but I have a hard time believing that the past was better than the present. We do need to look at the past realistically without rose-coloured glasses so that we can face the future courageously. One of the areas which in which a realistic understanding of the past helps us face the future is that of God’s people, the followers of Jesus Christ.
This week we are celebrating the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. We do use that word, “celebrating,” but had we been there to watch Jesus being crucified, we would have been doing very little celebrating. We would have been horrified by the inhumanity of the act of crucifixion, and we would have been frustrated from living under a justice system which allowed a man who had been convicted at a mock trial to be put to death immediately without the ability to appeal his sentence. We would have been appalled by the crowds which gathered as spectators to witness the suffering of another, and we would have been turned off by the blood and filth of the event itself.
Following Jesus’ resurrection and ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, a time in which the church grew (we perceive that it must be worse now that it was back then because the church is not growing nearly as rapidly), we would have been frustrated by the continual efforts of the Roman leadership to do away with the church and to put an end to the gathering of those who followed Jesus Christ. We would have cried out to God as we were put out of our homes and fired from our jobs because of our faith in Jesus Christ and our unwillingness to compromise our allegiance to him. We would have been dismayed at the worldliness of our communities and we would have been afraid that our youth would be tempted to abandon faith in Jesus Christ not only to participate in the sinfulness of the day but also to avoid persecution because of their faith. I suspect that had we lived then and been able to look into the future, we would have never said it is worse today than it was then. I suspect that those who lived then would have been envious of us who live in 2023 as followers of Jesus Christ.
Realistically, the past was not easy for much of the history of the early church, and yet the church not only continued to exist, it also grew and thrived. And yet we lament how bad things are, and we are fearful of the future. But we needn’t be. The same God who caused the church to grow and flourish then is with us now. Realistically, the church of the past should have died, but it didn’t; rather it thrived because God was at work. So, when we think about that, we can face the future courageously. It is because God who was with us in the past and who brought our brothers and sisters of long ago through great struggle will continue to be with us into the future.
The word, “history,” comes from the Greek which means, “knowledge gained from the past through investigation. When we look at history realistically, we discover that the past was not better than the present, and we also discover that God’s work of gathering people to himself was not hindered by the struggles endured by God’s people or the state of the world at that time. With that, we can face the future courageously, knowing that the same God who brought his people through the past will continue to grow his people into the future. If we look at the past realistically, we can face the future courageously. Sometimes we say that history is “His story” meaning that God is writing history. This play on words works only in the English language, but it is helpful, for not only is God writing history, but he is capable of keeping his people, the church, and it makes no difference to God if it’s worse now than then (or not).
[i] I wrote this quote on a piece of paper, intending to return to the paragraphs in which it is found, but I neglected to record the reference. I have been unable to recall the author or book from which I quoted it.
Pastor Gary
