Have you heard about “revisionist history”? It has been quite the topic of discussion in educational & historical circles for the last decade or so. The term means, in a nutshell, that we “revise” true history to give it the slant that we want in today’s era. An example would be taking a historical event and cleaning it up to be politically correct. This is seen in a lot of the current crop of history & scientific textbooks from grade school through college.
As a teacher and a writer I am always intent on giving people the true story, not the cleaned up version. We really need to learn from the mistakes of the past so they are not repeated. If the past is tidied up, there is no lesson to learn is there?
The urge to revise history is such a human one. We want things to look better than they actually were or are. Sometimes we even want things to look worse because it makes us look better in the here and now.
Have you ever done this with your own past? Sometimes we make our past stories look worse so our “testimony” will sound better. Then again, we may clean up our old selves because we are afraid of what people might think if they knew how corrupt we used to be. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard a young person say, “I’ve never been an addict or run away. I sure wish my testimony was better.” Oh, how wrong that is! The best life is the one not marred by deep, painful sins.
The church universal can often play into the urge to revise the past. It can either glorify past sinful deeds to make the salvation seem “bigger” or heap shame on them causing people to hide who they were before Christ entered their lives. Both approaches are wrong.
For example, I have wrestled with depression most of my life. My drug & alcohol addictions as a teen & young adult were, I believe, my way to self-medicate. After becoming sober and discovering what the addictions had covered up, I went to my doctor who put me on an anti-depressant which helped immensely. As a new Christian in a Word of Faith church I quickly found out though that being on medicine was a severe “lack of faith”. Oddly enough, you could boast about your deepest, nastiest sin and be cheered for it but boy howdy, don’t admit you are medication of any kind! So I went off my meds. I battled depression, prayed, fasted, begged God to take this “thorn in my flesh” away. For reasons only known to Him, he didn’t heal me. Off my meds, all I wanted was a drink or something else to make me “feel better”. So I went back on the anti-depressant and felt much more, well, sane!
In a previous church configuration, I hid my use of this medicine (and eventually went off it) for fear of having shame heaped upon me. My life was not good. At times I struggled to stay alive and sometimes wished I would just die.
About nine years ago I finally realized there was no shame in taking a medication that would supply what my brain didn’t. And I decided to start talking about it, willing to take whatever came with that admission. What I found were people who needed to know that it was okay to get help, medicinal or otherwise, for depression.
Happily for the last 7 or 8 years I have been in a church that is supportive of those with not only drug & alcohol addictions but also depression or whatever else a person is dealing with. I no longer feel the need to revise my own history which has been incredibly freeing and leads to better mental health as well.
What about you? What areas of your life are you revising or perhaps feeling shame about? Remember, as Christians the blood of Jesus not only cleansed us from our sin, but from our shame also.
Isaiah 54
4“Fear not; you will no longer live in shame.
Don’t be afraid; there is no more disgrace for you.
You will no longer remember the shame of your youth
and the sorrows of widowhood.
5 For your Creator will be your husband;
the Lord of Heaven’s Armies is his name!
He is your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel,
the God of all the earth.
6 For the Lord has called you back from your grief—
as though you were a young wife abandoned by her husband,”
says your God.
7 “For a brief moment I abandoned you,
but with great compassion I will take you back.
8 In a burst of anger I turned my face away for a little while.
But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,”
says the Lord, your Redeemer.
