Don't Know Nothing 'Bout History
Don't Know Nothing 'Bout History
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. One need not reach the logic stage of learning to ask the obvious question, 'Why?" We all want to know not only why people do things, but why things that people don't do, happen. It is part of our nature to seek out the causes of events. There are ultimately two answers as to the ultimate reasons things happen. There are, to be sure, always a host of secondary reasons for the whys. We only get to the ultimate reason when we get to the end of our why rope.
For the Christian the ultimate reason we m give for why something happens is, "Because God willed it", or to put a different construction on it, "Because it glorifies God." The two are the same because God always wills His glory, and glories in His will.
For the unbeliever the ultimate reason is not quite so glamorous. The ultimate reason turns out to be, "No reason." The unbeliever must see all things, all history as essentially random events. While they may have secondary causes, and secondary purposes, they have no ultimate cause or purpose.
Now when I say, "For the Christian..." and "For the unbeliever..." I am not saying that there are two different, mutually exclusive truths out there that are both accurate. If everything happens for God's glory, then manifestly, nothing happens for no reason. And if everything happens for no reason, it follows that nothing happens for God's glory. One of these understandings of history must fall.
There is then, no neutral ground from which we can approach the study of history. If Columbus sailed because God willed it for His glory, that means something very different from sailing for no reason. In fact, if there is no ultimate reason for his sailing, there is no ultimate reason to even seek the secondary reasons. The astute student of the atheist world view will ask the teacher who believes there are no ultimate reasons for why Columbus sailed, "Well then, why do I need to know that he sailed?" The ultimate reason can only be again, "No reason." If there is no purpose for the act, there is no purpose for knowing about the act.
God's acts of providence have meaning precisely because they are God's acts of providence. Take God out of the picture, and all you're left with is a blank sheet. Christians do not affirm that there is this ecclesiastical realm in which God acts, what we call church history, but the rest of history is out of control and going no where. Christian hisotry is not that Luther nailed 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, and secular history is about the building of the pyramids in Egypt. Even if the liberals are right (and they're not), that the secondary cause of Columbus' trip was a hunger for gold, and not to build Christ's kingdom, his trip is still sacred history, the working out of God's eternal decrees. Even if they are right, Columbus' greedy search for gold is a part of God's solemn purpose to build His kingdom, and only makes sense in that context. And the pyramids were built not ultimately for the glory of some Pharaoh, but for the glory of God.
There is no "neutral, objective" history if we mean by those terms a history separate from God. There is "neutral objective" history if we mean by that the objective truth that history is objectively about God working His purposes. We don't achieve "fairness" by suggesting that we just won't mention God in our history lessons. Whether the pagans believe it or not, history is His story.
Children in government schools do not need a daily reminder that God has nothing to do with history in order to buy into the unbelieving view. All they need is to learn history in a context in which God is silent. In fact they can (and often do) reach the same conclusion in private, parochial and home schools if we do not tell them that God is acting in history, not just sometimes, but all the time.
We need to remind our children that history is not the acts of man in time, some sort of movie written, directed and produced by man, but seen ahead of time by God. Rather history is the acts of God in time, the great drama of His glory played out upon the great stage of His glory, the creation. And we have the supreme honor not only to watch this story, and comprehend it in part, but to participate in it. We are players in the greatest show on earth.
And we must also remind them that the dignity of history lies not in the fact that it is written down, not because some acts worked secondarily to affect other acts more than others, but the dignity lies in it all being the outworking of God's plan. Thus not only is Columbus' discovery of the new world history, but so is the discovery of that discovery in the tender minds of our children history.
Though there may never be a history text that say, "In 19 and 98 Junior learned his history great", it is written in the book that counts, the book of God's providence, the book of His glory.