“Please inquire of past generations, and consider the things searched out by their fathers. For we are only of yesterday and know nothing, because our days on earth are as a shadow. Will they not teach you and tell you, and bring forth words from their minds?“ (Job 8:8-10)
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”– Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”– George Santayana
Introduction
For most of us the study of history is pretty tedious. Perhaps we have been conditioned to think this way by a bad experience we had studying history in school. Perhaps we just don’t see the value of studying about a bunch of dead people, or learning the dates of seemingly unrelated events, or perhaps we just don’t like to read about wars and deaths and wicked leaders.
If that has been your experience with the study of history then I would like to challenge those impressions and disappointments.
The major reason people don’t like to study history is that they approach the subject from the wrong point of view.
Most history that we have been exposed to has been taught from the perspective of man as the product of random chance, and this approach results in the meaninglessness of events. When taught from this perspective history becomes a series of unconnected events and people caught in an eternal cycle that just happens. Is it any wonder that we would become frustrated and disillusioned with such an approach?
For a Christian, however, the approach to history is completely different.
Have you ever heard history referred to as, “His story?” History, if viewed from a Biblical point of view, is nothing less then the record of God’s working out His great plan of redemption in and through His creation and His creatures. The Christian presupposes the existence of God, and of His great plan of redemption that gives meaning to the events and people of history. Each one plays a role in the grand drama being playing out in creation. Nothing happens by random chance, everything is moving towards that great climax at the end of time.
Remember that the Bible itself is primarily a book of history. It begins with, “In the beginning,” and ends with the great consummation of the destruction of this earth and all the wickedness it contains, and the recreation of everything, without sin, in the form of the new heavens and new earth. In other words there is a direction and flow, and a meaning to the events of history.
In between these great bookends of history we have the story of God working within humankind to bring about His great plan of redemption in the lives of individual believers.
The pivotal event in this sweeping story is the incarnation of God’s Son and His atonement for the sins of all mankind. In that pivotal event we have God Himself, in the Person of God the Son, directly intervening into the affairs of men, into the very flow of history, all as part of a plan conceived by Him from before the foundations of the world.
When viewed from this perspective history becomes more than just a bunch of dates, events, and dead people. It is the record of God’s direct intervention in our lives, and in the lives of all men. It is a story with a beginning, a dramatic pivotal central event, and a definite conclusion.
Why Don’t Men Learn
Why, then, in the face of such a dramatic story do most men still have such difficulty learning from what has gone on before? Why are the two quotes we read at the beginning of this lesson so true? I think there are several reasons for this sad situation.
First, because, to quote Pete from “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” “Peoples is peoples.” By this he means that people rarely change.
Look again at the quote we read from Job. The key phrase to help us understand our predicament is, “For we are only of yesterday and know nothing, because our days on earth are as a shadow.”
Unfortunately few men understand and heed the fact contained in this verse, that they are finite, time bound creatures who are part of a greater whole. Most men think they are the center of creation, and that history began when they were born, and that nothing that came before them has any real value or interest for them. The result is that they don’t study history or appreciate the lessons it can teach us. So they make the same mistakes as those who came before them.
A second reason why people don’t learn from history can be found in Psalm 11:3, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
What is meant here by the term foundations? The Hebrew word used here has reference to those pillars that support a society. The context of this verse is wicked men trying to tear down the righteous and their culture. We have an enemy who would like nothing better than to be able to continually reuse his weapons and deceptions to keep men from growing and achieving what God created them for originally.
By keeping men living in the here and now, instead of looking to the past for lessons regarding how to live, and the consequences of certain actions, he is able to do just that. It is one of his most effect ploys.
The third reason we don’t learn from our past has to do with how we approach history.
As we mentioned, if we approach history from an evolutionary perspective then the events and people in history are meaningless, so why would we ever expect to learn anything from them?
Scripture addresses this problem in several places. Psalm 10 talks about such people declaring, “God is in none of his thoughts.” Romans 1 tells us that the truth about God and His plan or redemption is suppressed in the unrighteousness of wicked men, and as a result God gives them over to depraved minds. It is no wonder that these wicked men never learn from history.
In future articles we hope to break this pattern and look to history, and especially the history of the church, to see what lessons we can learn. We hope to do that by looking at several key points, people, and movements in history to see what we can learn about God’s interaction with men. We will be looking at key events in history and learning what they can tell us about God’s covenant plan for mankind. But we also hope to make application of these lessons in our lives and the life of the church in our day.
