Culture Friday - What do we gain by looking back?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, August 13th, 2021. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. This month we’re marking a few significant ministry anniversaries: 40 years ago, WORLD published our first kids publication, It’s God’s World. It’s the paper that started it all and launched WORLD Newsgroup.

BROWN: That’s right. And we’re celebrating 10 years as a program! We’ve been listening back all week, highlighting some of our most memorable stories. We’ve heard from many of our reporters and staff from over the years—reflecting on God’s faithfulness and provision. And I’ve gotta mention too that this past Tuesday, we marked 1 year of WORLD Watch video news for kids. So quite a week indeed.

BUTLER: All this reflection got me wondering about the benefits of taking time in our lives to reflect. At one of our live events a couple years ago, someone asked our panel about Biblical role models as reporters. After someone mentioned Mark, Luke, the gospel writers, another chimed in with Mary, the mother of Jesus. Luke 2:19 says “But Mary kept all these things” or treasured these things, “and [she] pondered them in her heart.” Good journalists don’t just report what they see, they’re good ponderers too. They reflect so they can set that coverage within a greater context.

BROWN: It’s Culture Friday, and Trevin Wax joins us today to help us consider the personal and spiritual benefits of a reflective Christian life. Good morning, Trevin.

TREVIN WAX, GUEST: Good morning.

MB: You’ve had a few changes in your life recently. You’re no longer at LifeWay. You’ve started a new chapter of ministry with the North American Mission Board, and you turned 40! That’s a lot to reflect on!

WAX: That's right. Yes, yes, it is.

BUTLER: I think some of us may just be wired to reflect more than others. Some people keep a journal or diary, others keep genealogies and family stories alive, but it seems like many of us think a quick social media post about our lives is enough. Why do you think it important for all of us to practice more intentional reflection in the rhythm of our lives?

TREVIN WAX: Well, you know, I think it is one of the aspects of being human, that we view our lives in terms of a story in terms of a narrative. We think of our lives at the beginning. We think of ourselves on a journey. I mean, it's just almost impossible for us to not conceive of our lives in this way.

I have a friend who's a fiction writer, who is constantly asking that as a question: “If you were placed in the story, what kind of character would you be?” And of course, he's asking that question from a fictional standpoint as a novelist, but that is really a question that he says is also important for us to consider as human beings.

Because, as the Scriptures teach we are in a story. We're in the story that has been written by God. The drama of redemption that is unfolding. The grand narrative of Scripture, from creation all the way to new creation. And so taking a moment to stop and to reflect and to look back at our lives and to look forward is a good way of asking ourselves the question of where we’ve been, who we are, and what it is that we're becoming?

BROWN: Trevin, you said it's a good time to look at and ask the question,, you know, where we've been. What happens when we spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror? And those things, those regrets?

WAX: You know, I think of something the old missionary Lesslie Newbigin said is that nostalgia for the past and fear of the future, they're both out of bounds for the Christian. There is a sense in which you can look back, and it becomes paralyzing. Maybe because of regrets because of things that you've done, things that have had an impact on your life and in such a way that you live with the consequences.

But a lot of times, it's easy to look back at the past too much, Myrna, because we love living there. There are aspects of the past that we actually enjoy more than the present or that we we yearn for. We have a rosy view of the past. Either one of those ways can be detrimental if they keep us from the tasks that God has put in front of us, in our day to day lives.

BROWN: In a recent blog you wrote that you set aside time every July to take a break from writing articles and even put away your social media feeds. So how was this year’s break and what did you find yourself reflecting on during that time away?

WAX: Well, it was fantastic as it is every year to do that. I'm not always off of social media every July, but I'm generally off of posting anything for a whole month. And this time, I was pretty much off both. But I will say that being off social media has reminded me and has taught me something.

We don't need to fill every single nook and cranny of our lives with content that's, you know, coming at us from all sorts of places. If we do that, we're going to wind up just being driven by whatever is newest,  whatever is the biggest news of the day, without really saving any time to actually think through what is going on in the world around us. What are our responsibilities to those closest to us, and whatnot. So I think there's something valuable in us taking a step back in removing the clutter from our lives, whether it be physical clutter, whether it be digital clutter, whatever it might be, to give our self some space for that contemplation and reflection that hopefully will enable us to make better choices and to make decisions that are pleasing to the Lord.

BUTLER: Now you mentioned the danger of living in the past. So what does a healthy, Christian, reflective life look like?

WAX: Well, I think it's important for us to look to the past in order to retrieve what we need for the future. God has so orchestrated things that there are events and moments in our past that are designed by him, to make us and to shape us into the kind of people who will have an impact on others in the future.

Almost anybody who's gone through even through tragedy, or through times of suffering, will later find some sense of purpose and meaning in that suffering, for the way that that experience has prepared them for something else down the road—maybe something related to their own life and job, maybe something related to how they minister to others. But I think personally, we look back to our past to say, “What was God doing then to prepare me for what he has for me now and ahead?”

I think it's important for us to know our history, to know our past, to know where we've come from. Every generation is tasked with handing down the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Every generation is tasked with receiving that faith, that gospel, and then passing it to the next generation.

Whatever we might think when we look at the past, we don't find a golden era in which everything was pristine. But what we do find are aspects of true Christianity, gifts from the Lord, that we can use for the days ahead. It's like a treasure box back there and God has so has put things in the past that are going to aid us as Christians as we seek to be faithful in the future. And so just as we do that with our personal lives, I think it's important for us to do that as Christians. As we look to the challenges that we see ahead of us, we need to look back to grab resources we need from the Christians who have gone before us.

BROWN: Well, one of the things that I that I've done for over 20 plus years, I keep a journal, and that's how I record you know, my reflections. What are some other things that we can do to, you know, make sure that we are recording the reflections, the things that that God is giving us as we look back?

WAX: I've done something very similar. And, you know, looking back, it's nice to be able to go back and search that journal and to see things in the past and to see God's faithfulness and to see how God brought, you know us through difficult times.

You see the Psalmist doing this regularly. He’s in a particular moment of despair, or he's got some kind of problem that he's facing, and the psalmist then goes back and reminds himself of the goodness of the Lord reminds himself of the way the Lord has blessed him and has done great things for him in the past.

That's a it's a way of preaching the gospel to ourselves. And I think it's important for us to, to keep count of the wonders of God. The more we do that, the more we are likely to recognize God's good gifts to us when they come and to be grateful for them.

BUTLER: Trevin Wax is Vice President for Research and Resource Development at the North American Mission Board. Thanks so much for joining us this morning!

BROWN: Thank you, Trevin!

WAX: Thank you both. Glad to be with you.

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