If you are listener of podcasts, might I recommend one of my favourites: Undeceptions. There’s over 100 episodes of interesting conversations, as host John Dickson analyses various (mis)conceptions around Christianity. A recent example is ‘History Wars’, where Dickson asks whether or not the study of history is useful. If looking back can be painful, is history actually helpful? The pain can be all-consuming so many of us don’t look.
There is a famous saying, “The one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.” I don’t know about you, but it is from my personal history that I have learnt all my very valuable, although often painful, life lessons. Now, in my ‘job’ of chaplaincy, much like the ‘job’ of parenting, part of my goal is to try to help children through life by looking at the past with them. The aim is to extract as much learning from previous challenges and mistakes as we can together. We call this ‘raising children’. The surprise at the end of the parenting job is that have a fully formed adult and not just a child. We could reword the parenting job description as ‘raising adults’! This one thought changed my personal parenting.
History can be painful, and sometimes messy, but it is the greatest tool in shaping a fully formed adult. Avoiding the past detracts from the greatest power of history, finding out what can be learnt and improved on next time. Growing is a series of facing mistakes, seeing that there is always a future, and moving forward in the full light of history. Let’s look back together before moving forward together.
Peter Chase
College Chaplain • Pastoral Care
