For Wilshire Baptist Church
Ever thought about the time we are living in and how it stacks up against other times down through the ages? Ever wonder what our legacy will be, and how we will be measured by future generations?
A few weeks ago I attended a Q&A session at Baylor University featuring two authors and historians: Dr. Beth Allison Barr from Baylor and Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. I went on behalf of Baptist News Global to write an article about their topic, “Ceilings and Mazes: Exploring the Intersection of Faith, Gender and Leadership,” which I did. But one of their side comments spurred another thought that has stuck with me. Du Mez said at any given historical moment, people in that moment tend to be oblivious to changes that came before them.
“So, whatever is right in front of them seems to them timeless, eternal, God-ordained,” she said. “But then as a historian, we have this broader vantage point that we can see what appeared to be timeless, eternal and God-ordained in fact changed really dramatically over time. And then across cultures and across different racial groups, ethnicities, social classes, there is so much diversity.”
This resonated with me because I have long held a related belief, which I call “the arrogance of now,” and it is this: We tend to believe we are living in the single greatest period in the history of humankind. We are overly proud of all our knowledge and capabilities and what we are able to do with them. And in our arrogance, we fail to acknowledge that what we have is built upon the advancements of the generations that came before us. What’s more, we also tend to criticize past generations for what we consider their small-mindedness and ignorance regarding their beliefs and practices. We don’t consider that they were doing the best they could with what they knew and what they had at the time. Instead, we wag a finger at them and say, “They should have known better.” We penalize them for not knowing what they didn’t know and couldn’t know about everything from geography to biology and from sociology to psychology.
There is, of course, a huge irony to that because on any given day it can feel like we are living in the worst times ever. I mean, with all the political division, racial unrest, war, disagreement about education and law enforcement and climate change, distrust in traditional media and whiplash from social media, religious institutions in turmoil, and COVID of course, it can seem like we’re spiraling out of control. But are we really? I took enough history in school to know there have been much worse times than now depending on what piece of the cultural/developmental prism you are looking through. What remains to be seen is whether we have learned anything from history, and what we ultimately will do with these days that we have been given.
It does feel like we are going through some kind of major shift in the way we as a species live and interact with each other. But has there ever been a time when we were not in the throes of some kind of major cultural shift, even in just the past 100 years? We had two world wars in the first half of the 20th century that moved geopolitical borders, took millions of lives and sparked the mass migrations of millions more. People speak glowingly of the 1950s, but wasn’t there a “Red scare” and Cold War with the threat of nuclear destruction during that time. The 1960s brought us “peace, love and rock’n’roll” along with battles for civil rights and the Vietnam War and political assassinations, not to mention the rise of the youth culture and the huge changes that brought to just about everything and especially entertainment and retailing. The 1970s continued that and it spilled over into religion with the “Jesus movement” and the sunny faith of “Pass It On” and “Good News for Modern Man.” And on and on the jolts and changes have come with technology just speeding up the process – bringing us closer together and pushing us further apart at the same time.
Has there ever been a time of true peace and tranquility? And are we really living in “God-ordained” times as Du Mez says we are inclined to believe? I’m pretty sure the answer to both questions is “no.” However, I can say without doubt that this is God-given time, and our “occupancy” of this time is a precious gift. We can be good stewards of this time and try to leave things in better shape than we found them, or we can squander the gift for our own short-term benefit.