History

For me history is most alive in the biographies of persons, especially in the narratives and statements of those who include accents from God and nature than any other factors one might choose for accent.  The measure for the person of faith is to find if an orientation works for good in mankind.  Is there more to favor God and faith than there is to generate doubt, and/or entirely naturalistic cause and effect?   Some histories accent wars with their generals and government authorities.  Others accent movements and cultures rising and falling, and so various contexts form as specialization emerges.  Science seeks to tell the story in the analysis of evidence about weather, seasons, evolvement, conduct, and the related features of nature as it is found in an era.  Even so, the narratives come out differently as they are interpreted through different persons and contexts.  The horrors of warfare come out differently in the history books

I have read in the minor field in my journey to collegiate degrees, than the words of serious authors from many life contexts.  Ambrose Bierce described the suffering of the Civil War more graphically than most scholars I have read.  Bierce is sometimes, perhaps usually, seen as an oddball among writers.  He was a soldier in the Civil War, and recorded graphically what he saw. His history was an individual’s experience.

Biography is best, because persons are the only ones promised continuance – immortality.  According to Scripture all other factors than mankind will be omitted and forgotten.  Any geologist in the new creation will find nothing, absolutely nothing, from the old.  His heavenly assignments will have to be found in another field.  When one turns to biography, whether from Abraham to Abraham Lincoln, from Isaac to Isaac Newton, from Joseph to Joseph Stalin, from Elizabeth I to Queen Elizabeth II, there is some lesson of meaning for mankind.  It is more direct than the movements of nations and cultures.  Little wonder that Scripture focuses on the individual in the mass (society).  God works more closely with individuals than with any other factor in nature.  Redemption is ultimately for the individual, more significant than any other factor.  My biography is my history.  My future is yet to be told.  It is forming to be evaluated.

There are good and evil elements forming a compound in the differentials of my complex context.  In this there is analysis that informs me about what is important to know, and what persons may have found that point mankind to God, or something like a god.  From recent readings about mental/emotional frailties in Gandhi, Churchill, Ulysses Grant. Martin Luther King, even Lincoln I was reinforced in my opinion that they were individualized than those around them in the way they functioned and perceived.  I heard King speak publicly on two occasions, once at the University of Washington in Seattle, and once in Washington, D. C.  He was quite effective in his presentation.  Listeners were riveted to his cadence and content. 

I have read more biographies of Lincoln than I can remember through a span of more than seventy years.  I have read Gandhi biography, and related materials, but was most taken by:  Lead Kindly Light, a volume so named by the author as it was the title of Hindu Gandhi’s favorite Christian hymn.  Although I have read much about Churchill, and some of his writings and speeches, my thoughts about his life are less orderly than for the others.  I did follow his career to the heights, and was impressed with the choice of TIME magazine to make him the leading world person for the first half of the twentieth century.  All of these men were known for their depressions, their moves away from popular positions on occasions, their failures or denials to ultimate success, and a near spiritual regard held for them by their publics.  Lincoln had horrible depressions.  He was put on a suicide watch for a period during his presidency.  Churchill was also depressed but able to overcome by his own habits and planning, such as avoiding heights, or trains going through depots for concern that he might throw himself between the moving cars.  Both Gandhi and King thought seriously of suicide in their youthful years.  What is the lesson?  We read that Jesus groaned.  In his human nature brought low, by the experience of mankind in him.  It is well for us to know that the gnawing of our imperfections may make something of us in their management.  Jesus confronted the same monsters that trail us in the shadowed halls of our lives.  He was lifted by prayer, Scripture, and the Holy Spirit.  He prevailed and offers us the possibility of victory.  His resources remain available to us.