I have a box under my bed full of objects which hold special memories for me. It contains letters and photos, a champagne cork, a little plastic gun, a lip balm, some beads, a temporary tattoo, a golf tee – all reminders of special moments from my past. Maybe you have something similar. It’s important to many of us to preserve a record of our past. We erect gravestones after loved ones have died and we pass heirlooms down through the generations. But have you ever wondered why?
We also put a lot of time, effort, and money into preserving our collective past. History and heritage are a national preoccupation. England alone saw 20 million visitors to English Heritage sites in 2022, plus more than 5.3 million visitors to National Trust properties. The National Trust for Scotland welcomes 3 million each year to their properties, and Historic Environment Scotland a further 1.2 million. Meanwhile, the British Library keeps a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland and has 13.5 million books in its archives, covering everything from Cicero to Chomsky. But again, why are we so keen to preserve the past?
One reason is often to build on the knowledge and insights of those who have gone before. Scientific discoveries and technological advancements rarely come out of the blue. They’re usually the result of great minds developing ideas of others. As Isaac Newton once said: ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ We also hope to avoid disaster by learning from the errors of others. Tim Harford’s excellent podcast Cautionary Tales examines past mistakes and farces to equip us with insight into how we can do things differently in the future. We ignore the past at our peril, as George Santayana famously remarked: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’
A less utilitarian reason for preserving the past is to value communities and cultures. We want to recognise the worth of traditions, diversity, and creativity, for example by not letting minority languages like Welsh or Gaelic die out, nor by allowing heritage crafts like woodturning to become a lost art.
But I do wonder whether the main reason we preserve the past is to get a sense of who we are and where we belong in the world. The popularity of TV programmes like Who Do You Think You Are? and websites like ancestry.co.uk reveal our desire to understand the bigger story of our families and communities. We want to know where we fit, perhaps to give us some insight into our character, our destiny, and the meaning of our lives. To truly know who we are, we know we need to understand the past, which shows us where we’ve come from and reveals the bigger perspective of our lives. Appreciating the past gives us a context to understand our present and future.
A bigger story
What if there’s an even bigger story that we’re all part of? Remembrance and preserving the past are deeply significant in the Christian tradition. The Bible itself is a historic book that has been read more than any other on the planet. It has been translated in full into over 700 languages and there are thousands of preserved manuscripts of the New Testament. The Bible’s importance has been recognised around the world throughout generations.
The Bible gives us a valuable insight into a historic drama that is continuing today. Re-enacting the past was crucial for the Israelite people, a highlight being the annual Passover festival which celebrated God’s rescue of his people from slavery in Egypt. It is still celebrated by Jews (and some Christians) today, as a way of remembering God’s faithfulness, love, and care for his people. This historic event points to the unchanging character of the timeless God.
Jesus celebrated a Passover meal with his closest friends just before he went to the cross to die for all of us rebels and make a way for us to come back to God. He used the bread and wine as symbols for his body and his blood, communicating the profound truth that he would sacrifice himself to mend the rift between us and God:
[Jesus] took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’
Have you ever wondered why Christians continue to remember this historic event, rehearsing the story of their origins, how they got here, and how this reminds them of their identity and God’s character? It gives Christians strength for the future.
If Jesus was on Who Do You Think You Are? the researchers wouldn’t have a very difficult job as two of the historical biographies in the New Testament contain Jesus’s family tree, tracing his ancestry right back to Abraham, the father of the people of Israel. Jesus wasn’t just parachuted into a random moment in history. The whole unfolding of Old Testament events was leading up to his coming, which has profoundly shaped human knowledge, endeavour, communities, and lives ever since.
Personal, community, and cultural memorabilia, from gravestones and precious family photos to museums and national monuments, help us to preserve the memory of things that are important. We rightly dread the thought that things this precious might one day be merely dust; gone, forgotten, and remembered by no one. Christian faith brings something distinctive to this aspect of the human condition.
Many religious systems in the ancient world used sacrifices to try and manipulate the gods to bless everything from homes, to crops, to relationships – in other words to gain leverage over the gods to get them to participate in our story. The Christian faith says the opposite: that in Jesus, God sacrificed himself so that we could be part of his eternal story, a story in which every moment, memory, thread of hair on our heads, and fibre of our being is redeemed and saved for eternity.
If all we have to hope for is that our future descendants might remember us, we’ll probably soon be forgotten. (Do you remember your great-grandparents?) But if the Christian story of reality is true, then we can know now that we can have a hope for the future because of what God has done in the past.
This extract is written by Anne Witton and taken from Have You Ever Wondered? Finding the Everyday Clues to Meaning, Purpose & Spirituality, a reflective and creative book that lays the foundation for gospel hope edited by Andy Bannister and Gavin Matthews and published by 10Publishing. It is used with permission. You can purchase the book at www.10ofthose.com.
