History 1 - Intro ...

Monday, Oct 5, 2009. History can be extremely fascinating. Historical novels are very popular today. We love to jump into some particular time and live with the people there. All over Europe historical festivals are organised, the Vikings in Denmark, the medieval ages in Germany, the age of discoveries in Spain. We want to know where we came from. We want to know what was in the past to be able to judge our present world. We want to know, and we need to know. Our children play games where they are Roman soldiers, or pirates, or robbers in the desert with camels and pistols.

The bible is a book which covers more than 3000 years of history. It has been written by various authors, the events covered in its books range from ancient Iran and Iraq to the Roman and Greek civilizations of the first centuries. Then the history of faith went on with the development of the Christian church, with the monks, the catholic and orthodox churches, with the rise of the evangelical churches from 1500 and then the spread of Christian faith into the Americas and to Asia.

Faith is living and changing. Today our churches are challenged by many things. Every generation of history had to search and find its version of the original Christian faith. Every generation needed to formulate faith in its environment, within a changing historical framework, with changing philosophies and with changing controversies. When we want to find a healthy and well rooted faith today, it can be an important point to know the history of faith. It is not a dead history, but it lives in every thought we have, in every habit we follow. Our world today is made of the past, the present and the future. As our dreams shape our world today, our longing and our decisions, the dreams of our fathers have shaped their world and our world.

Stories constitute our view about history. Over the following days we will need to talk about key stories from the history of faith. We need to link these stories to dates, places and times. We will, for example, mention the story of Salomon, who came to power in 970 before Christ, around 3000 years ago. He is, until today, a symbol of wisdom. He has governed not by war, but by a wise rule. We will need to talk about the dark hours of people of faith. They are documented in many parts of the Old Testament, when God went to war against his own people, as they were dedicated to injustice and idolatry. We will need to talk about the time of the martyrs in Roman times and about martyrs of Faith today. We need to talk about the reformation with Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and many others. Modern secularism is flooding the church today, but there is also new life in all classical churches, a growing sense of unity among Christians. [R.W.E.P., jesusnetwork.eu]

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