"Do not say, "Why were the former days better than these?" For you do not inquire wisely concerning this" (Ecclesiastes 7:10).
In Solomon's time, harking back to "the good old days" was apparently just as popular as it is in our time and just as unprofitable. A humorist once quipped that "nostalgia isn't what it used to be!" A poet described it more eloquently:
"Into my heart, an air that kills, from yon far country blows.
What are those blue remembered hills, what spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain,
And happy highways where I went, and cannot come again". (Author unknown)
Whatever its expression, all of us over the age of forty are certainly well acquainted with nostalgia. It's reflected in a significant percentage of the output of the entertainment industry-television programs set in earlier times or reruns of older programs that take us back to our earlier days-"hits" of the fifties or sixties re-released on C.D., and so on. We treasure our memories in old photo albums or video recordings and admit that they will probably be the first possessions to be carried to safety in the event of a flood or fire. What can we learn from the Bible about this basic human tendency?
"Now the Lord had said to Abram, Get out of your country, from your kindred and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1).
Did Abraham ever look back nostalgically to the land of his birth, to the comfortable life he enjoyed before God instructed him to embark on the life of a nomad? The Bible doesn't say, but does tell us this:
"By faith, he (Abraham) sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God … If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one…" (Hebrews 11:9-10, 15-16 RSV, emphasis added throughout).
The land of Canaan, where Abraham sojourned in tents, was not a fundamentally better geographical area to live than Ur or Haran. Abraham was instructed not to return to his homeland for a quite different reason.
"For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Hebrews 11:10).
Abraham's nomadic life was a constant reminder to him that anywhere on the face of this earth, as it presently exists, is a poor substitute for the city and Kingdom that Jesus Christ is to establish at His return.
A second reason to mistrust the pulls of nostalgia is that all of us, as we go through life, should be constantly developing in mental, emotional and spiritual maturity; in effect, becoming a different and improving version of what we were ten or twenty years ago. Nostalgia deceives us into thinking that we can return to those "happy highways" and enjoy them in the same way as our 'former selves' once did. C.S. Lewis wrote of the dangers of trying to prolong life's thrills artificially instead of letting them go and moving on to something different. "It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy" (C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity" P.98).
There is one further reason, for a Christian perhaps the most important, to resist an overly strong attachment to places and things, whether of the past or present. We are told that everything in this physical world, including the things on which those fond memories are based, will one day come to a fiery end. The apostle Peter's second epistle describes a raging inferno which will one day engulf the entire surface of the earth, consuming everything that is not composed of spirit.
"But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up…but according to His promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." (2 Peter 3:10,13 RSV).
The Eternal God has determined that everything will one day be made new (Revelation 21:5), and when that glorious time comes, our fascination with the past will finally be laid to rest!
"For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind" (Isaiah 65:17 RSV).
