“He who controls the past controls the future.”[1]
Peering about through a fog of uncertainty, you sense that you are in a theater of sorts. Sweeping your gaze across seemingly endless rows of seats, you notice a figure with you, a strange being. His name is Deception; he has six faces: Pantheist, Panentheist, Agnostic, Naturalist, Nihilist, and Existentialist. Taking in the bizarreness of the creature with each face more dismal and hopeless than the last, a transcendent, penetrating voice thunders, “This is history.” In awe, stumbling, you steady yourself on a velvet seat-back noticing the inscription of today’s date. Realizing yesterday’s date inscribed in the previous row’s seat-back you ask, “How far away is the first row?”
“There is no first row.” answers the creature.
“If there was no beginning, this row wouldn’t be here.”
Confused, the creature scoffs, “What is that supposed to mean?”
“If the first row is infinity away, and we ran at ten rows per second, how long would it take to get there?”
Sarcastically superior, he responds, “We would never get there; it’s infinity away.”
“Exactly. If we started at the first row, ‘infinity away’ and ran towards this row, we would never get here either. History cannot be infinite having no beginning. If it was, our present would never arrive; it would always be ‘infinity away’ from arriving.”
The creature covers his ears declaring how the Bible cannot be trusted citing so-called evidence from history, though he previously affirmed history is meaningless having learned so from his friend Postmodernist.
Such is the living contradiction of Deception with all its faces.
The origin of the universe is an essential piece in the construction of a worldview.[2] The Christian worldview sees history as linear having an actual beginning, a progression, and a consummation of the ages.[3] Only theism welcomes the proposition of an absolute beginning of the universe.[4] And, Christian theism alone has the most plausible answer of a God who created the universe still involving Himself in history for the good of His creation and ultimate culmination of His plan.
One’s view of history carries great implications. If history has no point, neither can our existence…or anyone else’s. “Those who don’t know history have no sense of identity, and no sense of wisdom as they explore where they’re going to go. Without history we’re lost.”[5] Cicero said, “To not know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child.” People must understand life is a biography, and that choices made earlier in life impact what happens afterward.[6]
“The importance of knowing history is that one realizes that one is the recipient of a tradition; that the world didn’t begin with oneself, nor will it end with oneself.”[7] The Pilgrims held a Christian view of history knowing history matters, and ideas and actions have consequences. William Bradford wrote, “Last and not least, they cherished a great hope and inward zeal of laying good foundations, or at least of making some way towards it, for the propagation and advance of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in the remote parts of the world, even though they should be but stepping stones to others in the performance of so great a work.”[8] People caught up in their own little story will never lay themselves down as stepping stones for others.
History matters. Few systems view history in a way logically allowing our present existence or significance. Christian theism does both, and acknowledges the only real source of hope: We are not alone; the God of History is here drawing and guiding us to Himself and into the future.
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1 Orwell, George (1949). 1984. London: Everyman’s Library, pt. 1, ch. 3.
2 Steven Tsoukalas “A Survey of Worldviews”
3 Ibid.
4 William Hasker, Metaphysics: Constructing a Worldview (Nottingham:Inter-varsity Press, 1983), 116.
5 Os Guiness, “The Truth Project” DVD series.
6 Theodore Dalrymple, “The Truth Project” DVD series. (emphasis mine).
7 Ibid.
8 Bradford, William (1909). Cited in Valerian Paget, Bradford: History of the Plymouth settlement Rendered in to modern English. New York, NY: John McBrick Co.
