Who Cares About History?

Why should I care about history? History only tells me about people and events that happened years ago - sometimes hundreds, even thousands of years ago. History fails to help me today because what I face looks nothing like the world even 30 years ago. Even if history could help me, how do I know I can trust what some other person wrote down? That person had their own bias, wore their own colored glasses. Nothing more than his point of view ever made it to the pages of history. I’ve got my own point of view and no one tell me to give more weight to the historian’s view, or even your view. So, who cares about history?

Every time you read one of these articles, you hear about the biblical worldview. Every time I say that the Bible has something to say about all of life, not only our spiritual lives. And yes, the Bible has something to say about history. Everyone has a worldview, a way of looking at the world. We look at the world via the revelation of its Creator, a Creator who placed in us a yearning for Truth, meaning, and purpose. We’ve found it, but the rest of world still searches and they pick at the scraps they find outside of God’s revelation. After all, when you’re hungry, bad food is better than no food, right? However, the non-biblical worldview simply does not fit into what God has made, including what man is. No matter how tantalizing the scraps or how many a person can gather up, what we suppose about the nature of life outside of God’s revelation remains false and will never satisfy.

The opening paragraph describes the substitute view of history held by many today. (1) History is only a series of disconnected events that happened to occur one after the other. (2) History started by chance and it could end in an infinite number of terminals. (3) The record of the past only presents a dead person’s point of view. (4) Since we cannot know truth, we make our own and no truth is any better than any other. (5) The purpose of history (since it cannot truly be known) is to support and bear witness to my truth. That’s the alternative – what’ the biblical view of history?

You might first respond that the Bible says nothing about history, but let’s take a closer look. First, the Bible says “in the beginning” God created all that exists – the beginning of history. The Bible continues, written by the glove of human intellect filled with the hand of God, to count off the history of God’s chosen people towards an event no one fully understood before it happened – God entering the human race through Jesus, the God-man. The Bible even tells us about history that hasn’t happened yet through prophecy. From the Bible, we know that history began with a purpose and that every event through history marks progress towards an established end of pre-eternity where the Christ will meet his bride, the church.

Understandably, Jesus took history seriously. In his early ministry, he made a trip to his own hometown, went to the synagogue and read form the prophet Isaiah about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, sat down, and said “today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21). Isaiah wrote in time past about a future event, Jesus claimed to be the one of whom Isaiah prophesied, and Jesus’ own words describing Elijah and Elisha immediately following the reading gave credence to biblical history.

Stephen’s defense of his faith in Acts chapter 7 recounts the history of God’s redemptive acts. The book of Acts itself chronicles the history of the early church. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 that “I don’t want you to be ignorant of [history].” (1 Cor. 10:1a) Hebrews chapter 11 recounts the giants of faith. The entire New Testament company took history seriously.

It might have occurred to you that because the Bible presents the coming of Christ in the context of history, history forms the basis for our very beliefs. In history, God created. In history, Jesus came, died, and was resurrected. In history, the apostles drafted the gospels and epistles. In history, Christ will return. And, in history eternity will begin. Without events in history, we would not have the perfect sacrifice of Christ, we would not have atonement for our sins, we would not have been redeemed.

So, what am I to think about history? History consists of human events with a purpose, God’s purpose. What use is it? First, history helps me understand who I am, where I came from and where I’m going. Second, History provides me with a wealth of examples of good, bad, ugly and lovely human acts and a method of examining myself. Scripture provides me with the standard for evaluating the actions of humankind past. I can certainly look to biblical history to see how the nation of Israel alternately followed God and followed empty idols. I can see the ebb and flow of rebellion and repentance, the constant grace and mercy of God and the undying love of the Creator for his people. From that I evaluate who I am – the rebel or the penitent.

I can also inquire into the worldviews of other historical figures and determine what they presupposed about life, what they based their lives on. Likewise, I can examine the results of their worldview lived out. How did a person with a consistent biblical world view affect the events of history?

For example, during the civil war period in America, there were three main rationales for the anti-slavery movement. David Wilmot, a Democratic congressman represented the first view. Wilmot opposed slavery because of his own separatist views, wanting to limit slavery in order to limit contact with slaves. Abraham Lincoln represented the second view. Lincoln recognized the unalienable rights of slaves, but did not think it necessary to give them equal social or political status. Men like William Lloyd Garrison and Orange Scott represented the third view. “O, how accursed is that system," Garrison observed, "which entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image, reduces those who by creation were crowned with glory and honor to a level with four-footed beasts.... Why should its existence be prolonged one hour? Is it not evil, only evil, and that continually?” They held a biblical view of man and slavery, that God created each in His image without distinction, and that when man enslaves his fellow man he calls God a liar and does his evil to Christ himself. (See Matt. 25:41-45)

These men possessed varying worldview, with differing presuppositions about the nature of man, and each resulted in a distinct perspective on slavery. Certainly, Lincoln’s view put America on a path of recognizing the equal stamp of God on each man’s soul. But, what would have happened if the position of William Lloyd Garrison and Orange Scott, the biblical view of man, had ruled the day? Would our country have waited 100 years until the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education to prohibit school segregation or until 1964 when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act to legislate nondiscrimination?

Who cares about history? If we claim to hold a view of the world shaped by the Bible, we should. A bibilical vies of history presents the plan of God unfolding before us; it uses past people and events to draw us into conformity with God’s truth.