The dangers of looking back

There’s a meme or two floating around different social media sites that’s sort of capitalizing on the kids of the 90s. They vary a little, but they usually note that “there’s a Clinton running for President, the world is freaking out about Pokémon, and MTV is playing music again; what year is it?!” It’s a nostalgia thing. The kids who grew up in the 90s (my age group) are now grown, many with families of their own. When parents are forced to watch kids shows, they naturally look back to their own childhood and remember what that was like.

So, you hear the classic complaints:

• Back in my day, we listened to real music, not this fabricated nonsense! (Bonus: that line works when you talk about Swing, Rock n Roll, Hip Hop, Techno, Punk, Grunge, or whatever the kids today call their music… post-something?)
• When I was a kid, you could just watch TV. Now the shows for kids are so violent. (Never mind that Wile E. Coyote blew himself up with dynamite and Elmer Fudd was constantly brandishing his shotgun in characters’ faces.)
• When I was a kid, we played outside all day.
• When I was a kid, we worked hard all day.
• When I was a kid, we sat in class and read books all day.

Memory Lane is a nice place to visit, but the rent is brutal. It’s especially true in churches. It’s always a tempting place to go to the memories of the way things used to be. Funny thing about memory: it’s unreliable. Researchers are telling us that even the memories we are super confident about are rather fluid. We change our memories even while we’re making them.

So when we remember the songs of our youth, we’re remembering how we feel about them, and not their quality or content. When we go back and watch our favorite movies or cartoons, we may find them to be far less enjoyable than when we were younger.

In the same way, our memory of how things used to be in the church could be suspect. We may remember how full the Sunday school class was, but did we remember that half of those people never volunteered or talked about their faith? We may have memories of how vibrant a program used to be, but do we remember all the fighting and disagreements that drove people crazy?

The good news is that we don’t have to be trapped to the past. We get to dream about tomorrow, but most of all we get to enjoy today. It’s usually when we’re too busy looking in the rearview mirror that we miss the rainbow in front of us. It’s tempting to keep looking to the good old days of the past. But I’m convinced that the better days are still coming.