Fumbling Our Advantage 2.8.2024

     Despite the constant prattling of the doomsayers, Biblical language and stories are embedded in our culture. Though layers may have accrued to obscure the origin for some, and others hold that origin in some measure of contempt, the story of David and Goliath (for example) will always be a Biblical story and only the wholly ignorant or obtuse among us would claim otherwise. Biblical language and concepts also abound in our culture. Though “Peter at the Pearly Gates” may not be wholly accurate; Peter being delegated some kind of custodial responsibility over heavenly matters does derive from the Biblical worldview. How many movies, purporting to save humanity, seize upon the Biblical trope of Noah and the Ark, to provide an escape from whatever dramatic trauma is about to overwhelm humanity? In like manner, the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son are so well known that virtually any educated person, regardless of religious preferences or lack thereof, would be thought uncouth if they could not locate the source if not the chapter and verse for these now proverbial stories. 

    Rather than seizing upon this advantage the Church, for reasons I have spent a lifetime trying to discern, routinely fumbles our control of these stories because we persistently fail to treasure and tell them as life-changing stories. 

    Try as I might I simply cannot think of any reason for us to always fumble our advantages in the name of Biblical and Historical thinking. Far too many Christians have a knee-jerk reaction to those who only partly know these Biblical stories. We are quick to correct, chide, and even mock. This is hardly a Christian response and every time I hear of such an episode, in my mind’s eye I see the elliptical spheroid slithering out of the ball-carriers hand. There is a proper way to engage those who know the language of the stories but not the intent. This presumes that you care more about reaching the lost than winning an argument, owning the other, or feeling superior. 

    This speaks not only to our handling of the Biblical Text but also to our hermeneutic of History. If we fail to see the capacity of Scripture to become inculcated in cultural linguistic patterns how more will our blundering prevent us from seeing human, structural, and other historical errors?

    What good is a worldview if it misses the most obvious things occurring around us? How does a Biblical understanding make a difference when we cannot comprehend the patterns of historical processes that define our own cultural heritage? Let me offer some preliminary viewpoints that will help us to construct a hermeneutic of history that can help us navigate sometimes bedeviling cultural developments. 

Expectations

    We will likely find in history what we expect. If we think all historians are lying, we will be paranoid. If we think everyone, from any possible perspective, was writing the whole, unvarnished truth we will be naive. Neither alternative is helpful. 

    What we should expect is that everyone writing about the past is telling a story to advance their understanding of the causes and effects of historical processes. A hermeneutic of history needs to be robust enough to ask every author, expert, or chronicler the right questions to sift out both their motives and accuracy. 

    At the heart of discerning these expectations will be an understanding of Story that is flexible enough to absorb many differing ways to approach the same events and evidence without privileging some evidence and marginalizing others. The word for this process is “critical” which is another way of describing intellectual honesty functioning to curb both curiosity and prior conviction. When we have our expectations in check we can move on to another analytical tool. 

Categories

    Without categories, it is virtually impossible to assemble any kind of data into information. If every fact is a thing unto itself, virtually the whole process of thinking simply bogs down. Natural language itself has parts of speech that are intended to categorize what different kinds of words do. 

    Concerning history, we need several kinds of categories to help us discern between different kinds of information. We need literary categories: a work may be a narrative, historical fiction, epic, geographic treatise, or written in praise of heroes. Each of these literary types can document historical processes or people. We also need chronological categories: Centuries, Eras, Epochs. We require categories to discern background from foreground issues. We need categories of social and cross-cultural analysis. 

    This process is not as complex as the description might imply. We transparently use categorical thinking every day. The difference in this circumstance is that we want to be critically aware of the categories of analysis we are using. 

Contexts

    A third tool is contexts, and here the plural is of utmost importance. Every event that has ever happened has occurred in multiple overlapping contexts. Various historical approaches may not, actually be ideologically driven at all. They simply assume different contexts. Consequently, a hermeneutic of history needs to both unwind those contexts to examine them individually and be capable of examining the historical phenomena in question amid the twisted cultural contexts in which they actually occurred.

    With these structural tools in place, we are ready to come to grips with historiographical research and what it means to “understand history”. This is where, for many of us, it gets tricky. Having mastered the tools of analysis we lack the humility of synthesis which is where the scattered contexts, expectations, and categories resolve themselves once again into the original story. To that end, there are a few circumstances I wish to close with, a few fumbles that we need to learn to avoid. 

1. Dissection: Misunderstanding history by dismembering the specimen and not putting it back together. The past, particularly as we read about it, is more than an aggregation of facts and data. Most historical writing tells a story. Ignoring that story is like scattering a frog all over the laboratory. It is both reckless and pointless. 

2. Scavenger Hunt: Ransacking the past for “useable stuff” while ignoring what we don’t want or like. There are unpleasant truths in the past. Overlooking or ignoring them is not honest. 

3. Privileging the Present: Misunderstanding how the present is built upon the past and dismissing the past merely because of its “pastness.” Look at any list of the “greatest players of all time.” In just about any sport. Eighty-five percent will have been active within 10 years of the person making the list. When we project this onto our understanding of history it judges everything by current fad, fancy, or focus.

4. Mythologizing the past: Everything was better, truer, fairer, faster, and more beautiful in the Good ol’ days. Ever heard of diphtheria? 

5. Missing the Forrest for the trees & vice versa. Yes, the details matter. And yes, the big picture matters. A mature understanding of history seeks to integrate the macro and microstructures of the past. The best historiographical writing masters this.

    With respect to Christianity, we need to know what happened in the past. We need to know for the broader Christian community as well as our own tribe. We need to look at past events not as a spectator but as someone whose continuing faith and practice exist downstream from the events of our forefathers. We should unashamedly look at the mistakes made by previous generations of believers as well as their victories and successes. How else would we learn from the past? Why even study it if we don’t intend to take their stories seriously? 

    There is really no excuse in the twenty-first century for fumbling our advantage. We have all the tools we need to understand the story of God’s people since the close of the New Testament era. We can illustrate the stories of Scripture by applying the very truths learned by prior generations as we seek to inculcate our generation of churches with Biblical faith. Ignorance of the great stories of faith and the lessons to be learned is a turnover that we cannot afford to make if we intend to advance the cause to which we are called. The first discipline to be embraced is honesty. The second is joy at not only inheriting the story but inhabiting it.