Wake Up, Look Up

Hello everyone and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, should we chase the good old days? This is prompted by a thought provoking article I read in the Atlantic recently by philosopher and thinker David Brooks. He, was talking about how he's seeing a growing trend in American society to go backwards. That is, people grow disillusioned with modern society, finding it spiritually hollow, lonely, disorienting, corrupted. people are longing for a return to whatever period of time they feel things were best. You've got the online stoics wanting to go back to the Roman Empire, traditional housewives wanting to go back to the 1950s. You just got this sense of things were better back in the good old days. And he points to a number of thinkers in a number of places. And by the way, he does a good job of showing how liberals are thinking this way. Conservatives, religious people, irreligious people. We're all finding ourselves saying we. It's almost like being in the car and saying, we, we made a wrong turn back somewhere. Let's turn around and go backwards and see if we can figure it out. And Brooks is arguing, hey, going backwards isn't going to help. And it made me think of this question because I wonder how most Christians would answer this. are we, should we be trying to go back to the good old days? Is Christianity about a return to a previous period of time? And the answer, by the way, might surprise you because I think when a lot of people think about Christianity, they think, oh yeah, Christians want to live in the 1950s, they want to live in the 1600s. But the Bible really isn't about moving backwards. I mean, consider this just the obvious thing. If the Bible begins with two people in a garden, but it ends with millions of people in a city, the Bible is not anti progress. In fact, when God puts Adam and Eve in the garden in Genesis 2, he tells them to be fruitful and multiply, to shape the world, to have dominion. He doesn't even want them to linger where they are. And by the way, where they are, are is a paradise for human flourishing. He's telling them, have children, spread out, do some things, build, shape, cultivate. The Bible, contrary to popular opinion, is about moving forward. Now, the writer of Hebrews captures this very well in Hebrews 13:14 when he says this. For we have no lasting city, by the way, that's backwards language. We're not longing for Rome or Paris or Washington or, we have no lasting city. Here's what he says. But we seek the city that is to come. Of course, he has in mind the new Jerusalem at the end of the book of Revelation. Here's my point. Christianity is not about regression. It's about progression, of course, not towards rampant modernity or progress in artificial intelligence or human genetic cloning. Certainly there are some roads as a society that we can go down that aren't good for us. There are some things like legalizing marijuana or gambling that I think recent history is telling us have not been good for us. We should go back and fix those. But Christianity is about moving forward. It's about developing a relationship with God, cultivating a community of people, cutting across languages and nationality and racial identity and ethnic identity. It's, about building a new world. Revelation, 21. Jesus says, behold, I am making all things new, new, exciting, innovating, progression. That's what Christianity is about. Listen, we are not moving backwards for two reasons. One is what God has for us is forwards. But the second reason is. Let me let you in on something. There were no good old days. Even if we can point back to different periods of time and show how they had elements of truth, we can also show they had elements of not truth. Like even in the history of our country. Are there ways we're getting worse? Sure. Are there ways in the past we were worse? Yeah, go talk to an African American. Go ask a woman if she wants to give up the right to vote. Go ask your 13 year old if they want to work at a factory for 20 cents an hour. Look, we're not wanting to go back to periods of time that were just as sinful and just as corrupt as our own. The truth is that human progress on our own is always shot through with negative things. So if you want to be critical, you'll find something we what we need is not human progress, but progress under the authority of Jesus Christ. Because what he builds is always pure. What he builds is always great. You'll never want to go backwards. You'll just want more of it. So if you find yourself longing for the good old days, stop. There's no hope for you in reverse. Move forward under the authority of Jesus and long for the city that is your future. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!