Fascinations

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by religion, cultures, and history. My current job seems to encapsulate two, and maybe three of those. As a kid, I was usually on the religiously zealous side. I was teaching VBS as soon as they would let me, and Sunday school. I was preaching and leading singing and doing all that as soon as I was old enough to figure out how to hold a Bible and sermon notes at the same time. I also always liked maps and I remember being fascinated with a metal globe I had in childhood. A Philipino nurse in one of my too-frequent hospital visits fascinated me as did my friends in high school whose parents were from other countries. I always wanted to know what made them tick, what they thought, in what ways were they different from everyone else. And history. I was a history maniac as a kid. I loved our family history, I visited cemeteries and battlefields, looked at antique cooking utensils,. I had pictures of Civil War generals hanging in my room. I drug my family to Anderson, GA, to see the Civil War's largest military prison. (Yes, I have very, very patient parents.)

I've been reading the book pictured. Here are a few thoughts from it about why we should study history, especially church history:

"history as a discipline ... seeks to hold together in one story continuity and discontinuity"

"We begin with a sense of identity that is in some way fragile or questionable, and we embark on the enterprise of history to make it clearer and more secure. ... the aim is to emerge with some fuller sense of who we are."

"We like to know our debts, we do not like to be moulded by forces, built up by contributions, that we cannot see and evaluate."

"becoming contemporary involves an openness to those other believers, past and present, in whom Jesus is believed to be active"