History is a record of what has been which has brought us to where we are. It is a story about the past that is significant and true. God’s self-disclosure is embedded in history; it describes history, and by it we understand, learn, and have reference. But more than just a record, it contains propositional truth – attitudes and behaviors that are prescribed; truths to be believed and followed.
Lamentably, these days it is trendy to shun history. The term C.S. Lewis used for such an attitude was “chronological snobbery”, which is defined well by historian, David Crabtree:
We live in a time of rapid change, a time of progress. We prefer to define ourselves in terms of where we are going, not where we come from. Our ancestors hold no importance for us. They lived in times so different from our own that they are incapable of shedding light on our experience. Man is so much smarter now than he was even ten years ago that anything from the past is outdated and irrelevant to us.
If we refuse to listen to history, we will find ourselves fabricating a past that reinforces our understanding of current problems. Professor Penelope J. Corfield at the University of London asserted, “People who feel themselves to be rootless live rootless lives often causing damage to themselves and others in the process.”
It is, in fact, necessary for us to study history. By it we understand the present (how did we get here), offering contextual insight into current realities. By it we also understand ourselves, providing a sense of identity. Each one of us is a living history.
Don Ivey at the Center for the History of Family Medicine wrote,
History is… something very real and alive and meaningful to all of us. It is, in fact, one of the key things that helps to define us…as individuals and as human beings – for what ultimately separates us from the animals is our sense of self and our collective sense of the past.
Through understanding history, we also glean answers to existing problems. In history we find remedy for today because it sheds light on the question of reality and shapes our worldview. What is truly real? What does it mean to be human? What is wrong with us? Is there a solution? Where are we in the flow of history?
No worldview can satisfactorily answer these questions like biblical Christianity – specifically, the Person of Jesus Christ. When it comes to Christianity you must deal with history.
God is like what God has done. It is on record; “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (1 John 1:1). Jesus Christ, a man in history, was God with us - tangibly. The record continues to shed light on us today providing context, understanding, identity and remedy.
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