God Cares about History. You Should Too.
Some Are Trying to Reshape America's History. It's Important that We Defend It's True Telling.
Stories define us in many more ways than we may realize. The bedtime stories read to you as a child still echo in the deepest parts of your mind. The movies you watched as a teenager opened your eyes to different ideas and perspectives. The stories your grandpa would tell you about his childhood still make you chuckle. Even our own stories shape how others view us. If all of these little stories affect us in so many different ways, imagine how much God’s story affects us. That’s what history is—God’s story of the world. And it matters to Him.
We’ve heard a lot of controversy surrounding the subject of history lately. The 1619 Project has attempted to critique the history of this country as it has been told and rewrite it to a different narrative. While the project has clear errors and inaccuracies, it has influenced our culture in significant ways, so it cannot be ignored.
The 1619 project claims that the United States of America did not start in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but rather, our history began when a ship of enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619. The project “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” In other words, the United States is better defined by slavery than by liberty and justice according to the 1619 Project. This is a big deal. History matters.
There is no doubt that slavery and discrimination play a large part in our nation’s history. It was nearly a hundred years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence that enslaved Africans were set free and a hundred years after that when Black Americans were given civil rights. We sinned greatly in our past in this regard, and the history we tell should be honest about it.
History shouldn’t hide America’s sins, but it also shouldn’t make them the forefront. It was wrong for our founders to write about freedom while their farms were run by slaves. But if we want to be faithful to history, we must remember that it was the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that eventually paved the way to freedom for all Americans.
The 1619 Project wants to change our history’s theme from freedom to slavery. That way of thinking has horrific consequences for life today. A nation with a theme of slavery creates a culture of victimization, it pits oppressors against oppressed, and defines the world through the lens of race. This racial rewrite of our history divides us according to our past with no promise of unity for the future.
History shapes the present. God regularly reminded Israel of that. He even gave Israel an event that defined their history—the Exodus. When God gives Israel the Law, He repeatedly reminds them of their history.
For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy (Lev. 11:45).
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day (Deut. 5:15).
Watch yourself, that you do not forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (Deut. 6:12).
This theme of Israel’s history continues past the Law and into the times of judges and kings:
They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the Lord to anger (Judges 2:12).
Since the day that I brought My people Israel from Egypt, I did not choose a city out of all the tribes of Israel in which to build a house that My name might be there, but I chose David to be over My people Israel (1 Kings 8:16).
The theme continues through the Psalms and the prophets and into the New Covenant:
I commanded your forefathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, “Listen to My voice, and do according to all which I command you; so you shall be My people, and I will be your God,” (Jer. 11:4).
[Christ] remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called My Son” (Matt. 2:15).
God has a clear theme for His people: deliverance and redemption from slavery in Egypt.
In no way am I trying to make a connection between the history of God’s people, Israel, and the history of America. There is no connection, and America is not God’s chosen nation. But we should recognize how much emphasis God places on history.
History defines every nation and people group. It is their shared story. That applies to America. We are one nation with one shared history. While that history may have some pretty terrible stories, we must keep telling it—and telling it accurately. Our nation didn’t begin in 1619 with slavery. Our shared story begins in 1776 with freedom, and though sadly that freedom was not recognized for all people at the time of its inception and still is not recognized today for children in the womb, that freedom gave us a shared value that would ring throughout our history. That document in 1776 and its foundation upon God’s revealed will for human government gave us a story. Let’s keep that story alive. Let’s care for our history.