Christ's Story and our Healing
by Paul Grant
Auld Lang Syne is upon us once again. The Scottish song that refuses to die, even as its words grow decreasingly intelligible to contemporary English ears, is a surer guest at New Year’s Eve than any individual Christmas song. Roughly translated as “the good old days”, Auld Lang Syne is a melancholy song of fellowship and remembrance, sung upon occasions of passing time - particularly New Year's.
Few occasions of remembrance gain much of a hearing in our culture. Norman Mailer once described Americans in the age of nuclear warfare as living in a state of now with no past, and no future. It is indeed a shame that we only feel safe enough to publicly remember the past when we’re drunk. Because memory is, from a certain way of looking at life, what makes us human at all. Relationships are built on trust, and trust through memory. It is the human capacity to live not just in space, but also in time, that allows us to love God, and to love each other. Without memory, there is no belonging. Without memory, there is no learning, and no growth. Without memory, we can’t even have names, because names connect us with everything we've done and everywhere we've been.
But memory also connects us through time to abuse, and wounds, and fears. People who try to forget the past are not trying to lose their identity; they’re trying to escape the past. For such people losing their roots, their stories, and even their minds, is better than living with a past. In his terrific novel White Noise, Don DeLillo suggests that contemporary Americans obsessively fill their lives with busy-ness in order to drown out the big questions of life. We’ve lost the cultural resources to face death, so we resort to avoidance. DeLillo’s satire follows to their logical end his characters’ choices as they try to live without a past or a future.
When we say that Christianity is an historical religion, we’re not saying that Christianity existed as a religion in history. That much is too obvious to mention. Rather, we’re noting that Christianity is a religion built around a story. We learn about people, in the archive of human memory, who encountered God. We learn about a God who entered into human society.
Not all religions tell stories. Buddhism, for example, in its purest form is hardly a historical religion – it is a line of reasoning, built around the promise of escape. Nirvana is often mistranslated as Paradise. No, Nirvana is a Sanskrit word meaning “blowing out of existence”. The image is that of a flame – whoosh – and it’s gone. It’s a death more deadly than death: it’s being blown out of existence altogether. Buddhism is a deeply honest religion. Unlike most New Age, Secular, or indeed most folk Christian followers, the Buddhist confronts the abyss, rather than trying to drown it out.
But Christianity is a religion built on memory and story. Jesus is not just the God who entered into space and time; he is also the Lord of space and time. He is the Lord of 2004 and the Lord of 2005. He is the God who doesn’t wash away history; he heals it. When we begin to grow as Christians, the Holy Spirit inevitably starts poking around in our memory. God is not trying to cause pain; he is wanting to heal us. He sheds new light and new peace – new shalom – on our memories.
Because our faith is based on memory and story, to grow in spiritual maturity is to grow in relational depth: with the church and with her God. Maturity – which is another word for ripeness – is the goal of childhood. As Americans we are so afraid of growing old that we resist maturity, fearing that it will come at the expense of our life and love. But real life, and real love, comes with maturity. And real maturity comes with memory.
As the “auld” year passes into memory, and the new one begins, fresh and full of promise, celebrate the past and the future and the right-here, right-now. All three are open for transformation into life and love, by the handiwork of a historical God.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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