by David Melton
I am a history guy. I won’t try to hide it because it wouldn’t do any good. History shows.
Give me a TV remote and it will automatically drift toward a documentary. Send me on vacation and I’m trying to wriggle my family toward some historical site (usually against popular opinion!). Put me in a class with students and history is coming out … regardless of the material.
I’m pretty sure my sons sometimes think I am history. One of my boys, a baseball buff, asked me if I ever saw Babe Ruth play! Some of my students probably have a similar view of my personal antiquity.
I want to say that while it is a grave mistake to live in the past, it is a tragic misstep to be ignorant of it. The key is to balance then and now. The Bible is history — timeless to be sure — but history nonetheless. In Boston we live where history is engrained into our culture. I think it makes it a little easier for us to equip students who understand and appreciate the past, but who have a firm grip on this moment. We just have to succeed in that.
I want our students to know biblical history. We travel the biblical world each spring to enhance that. I also want Boston students to know and understand church history (to the degree that is possible!). I even want them to understand our own history. One of the dangers young students face is a myopia that God’s working in the world started with them. That can lead to lives and ministries that are self-absorbed, thinking only about the now — my personal now. We just cannot afford to do that. History is a great humbler, and a great teacher.
Did you realize that this month is the 200th anniversary of American foreign missions? If not, you get zero history points.
Two hundred years ago, Adoniram and Ann Judson, and a few others, left Salem harbor (others later from Philadelphia) and headed toward the unevangelized masses of the East. They were driven by history — a historical “commission” to go. They were obligated by the truths of a historical text — the Scriptures that command us to live and serve because eternal souls hang in the balance. Those young missionaries were enabled by history — the history of their own lives, families, ministers, churches, and educational institutions that had grown them into the “now” … now being the moment of their departure for foreign fields.
I think they remarkably embody how and why the past and the present must be inseparable. We are all what we are because of our history. That is even true of our fellowship of churches. Like any family or any congregation, we have our historical hiccups and headaches. But we are a brotherhood that, when we have hung together with past, present, and future in our scope, has done far more collectively than we ever could have done individually. That is history not to be forgotten or ignored.
I want my sons to understand that. I am determined that our students understand that. I am a history guy.