“Don’t know much about history… Looked at the pictures, then I turned the pages.” So goes the Art Garfunkel remake of the old Sam Cooke song “Wonderful World.”
I fell in love with History as a subject because I lucked into some extraordinary teachers in high school and college. Mrs. Fraley, a diminutive fireball, made world history come alive for 10th graders – quite a feat. And then Jerry Faulkner (whom many Charlotteans will recall as the longtime coach at Charlotte Latin!) made the study of U.S. History (including as it unfolded in each morning’s newspaper!) as rigorous and satisfying as his basketball practices. And then in college: Richard Chowan’s mesmerizing lectures (without using a single note) felt like time travel back into ancient Greece and Rome. He knew almost nothing (and didn’t really care) about the modern world. Gosh, if they’d only had phones with video cameras back then.
America’s 250th anniversary begs us to take our history as a country seriously. David McCullough (whose books on John Adams, 1776, Theodore Roosevelt, and Harry Truman are just unbeatable) assessed why and how history matters: “History shows us how to behave. History teaches us what we stand for. Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant. It’s rude. It’s a form of ingratitude. I hope that we will become a people who are about the past because we care about the future. I hope that we will become a people who are less self-centered, self-conscious, and selfish.”
I can’t fathom how anyone would be very serious about Christianity without a deep devotion to history. The Bible, the story of Israel, the life of Jesus, and the birth of the Church, simply is history. Facts. Things that really happened – and those things teach us what we stand for and tell us how to behave. They make us less self-centered. We are grateful.
Whitney Brown (of Saturday Night Live fame) put it in a funny way: “There’s a lot we should be able to learn from history. And yet history proves that we never do. In fact, the main lesson of history is that we never learn the lessons of history. This makes us look so stupid that few people care to read it. They’d rather not be reminded. Any good history book is mainly just a long list of mistakes, complete with names and dates. It’s very embarrassing.”
It’s embarrassing for us Americans because we have a glorious, if occasionally problematical history – but we don’t pay attention to it. We don’t value it. We don’t let it define who we are now. As Santayana put it, “Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
The debate seems never ending in America. The Trump administration announced the 1776 Commission “to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character” – also to “clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools” – referring openly to the 1619 Project, which sought to highlight the ongoing consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans.
Which history shall be taught? Which should matter to us? As Christians, there’s no other answer besides “Both!” The Bible gives us the glory and the underbelly. David, Solomon, Abraham, Peter, and Paul: great titans of faith, and we’re privy to their days and seasons of struggle and shame. Israel: a great nation, and a trainwreck too, as was the early church. As are you and I and our nation today.
This is theologically pivotal. Conservative-leaning theologian Christopher Watkin reminds us that “There is a fault line between good and evil, but it does not run between different social groups. It runs down the middle of us all.” He shrewdly suggests that right-leaning conservatives would shrug and say “Adam and Eve made their choice; they have to live with the consequences,” and left-leaning liberals would sigh and rail at God for judging people who were just doing their best. There is sin; there is judgment; and there is mercy and hope.
The beauty of our country is we embrace the fullest possible story and know this is the only way forward toward healing. Watkin, who focused not on religion and politics, but Genesis and theology, adds that a robust sense of sin and judgment “strengthens and humanizes society, promoting democracy, equality and human dignity, hope and care for the world.”
I feel pretty sure that we are bedeviled as people and as a nation by an excess of black and white thinking, of viewing every issue as an either/or. To get to Lincoln’s “with malice toward none and charity for all let us bind up the nation’s wounds,” we need more both/and thinking. Most assuredly, when it comes to our history, and the Bible’s history, it’s not the whitewashed, expurgated version, or the negative rehearsal of horrors alone that will achieve any healing. It’s both/and, just as I’m a both/and, and you are too.