A couple of days ago, Rebecca and I were watching the Today show’s 2008 review. We both like history and all of us need to realize that 2008 will soon be history. I have always like watching the year in review shows since I was a teen ager. I would love to spend my New Year Eve watching the year in review. Ok , I was not normal. I stopped watching them after Dale and I got married because we would spend New Year’s Eve at church. I started watching them again when we moved from Pennsylvania. This was until someone told me that they didn’t want to watch because they had already lived through the year and they did not want to watch a review of it.

That statement, made years ago, has haunted me this year. People tend to forget history for one reason or another. There is a phrase that says, “Those who do not remember history will be doomed to repeat it.” I have seen this in the world and in the church. Perhaps it is because of our me-centric culture – perhaps it’s because we don’t care, or perhaps it is out of ignorance, but there are people who have no clue of history.

Here in America, we tend to forget that our Constitution guarantees the right for us to worship as we please. We tend to forget that the colonies were religiously diverse; Puritans, Anglicans, Catholics, Baptists, and others. Our nation is even more diverse religiously today. Even so, our founding fathers gave each one the right to worship as they please, even if we do not agree with them. Sometimes that thought is tough for Christians to process. Yet, that is our history as a country.

When it comes to church history, we may like to forget (how convenient) that there was 1500 years of church history before the Protestant Reformation. As those who are connected to the holiness movement, we tend to forget that there were almost 350 years between the Reformation and the start of our church history. Our daughter Rebecca loves church history. She has read and reread several books on the history of the Church. The Church (the holy, apostolic and catholic) has been around for 2000 years – many times as Dr. Earle Wilson has said, “Not because of us, but in spite of us.” Let us not forget that.

My point is that we need to go back and take a look at history. We will find many great lessons that we can learn. It will help us from making similar mistakes. Let us embrace history so in the future we do not fall on our faces.