Imbibing the Wisdom of Ancient Faith Can Be as Refreshing as a Hot Cup of Coffee.
Often without realizing it, well-meaning Christians these days have a past they’re ashamed of. For the most part, they don’t think much about it because “old traditions” and “primitive theology” of bygone years couldn’t possibly be relevant to twenty-first century believers.
I know, because I’ve thought that way myself. We’ve assumed that somewhere along the way, the early purity of Christian belief got corrupted—whether by paganism, Catholicism, politicization of the faith, or maybe just complacency. Power struggles happened. Good-hearted believers got side-tracked. Easy believism took over.
Few of my preconceived ideas were true—and re-thinking some assumptions ended up being way refreshing.
What I found exciting when I began to explore the realities of what happened in the distant Christian past is that few of my preconceived ideas were true—and re-thinking some assumptions ended up being way refreshing. To do it, I had to leap over centuries of writers, theologians, church politics, and ignorant histories to see what really happened in the early centuries of Christianity and suddenly grasp how relevant the ancient past is to our Faith today.
What has church history (the past) got to do with now? It’s much the same as how early American history—like the writing of the U.S. Constitution—affects life in the United States today, even though it happened more than two centuries ago.
The developments through history sometimes help us and sometimes hurt us. This is especially true when talking about a history as long as that of the Christian faith. We have 2,000 years of direct history of the church and another few thousand years of directly relevant history before that.
The developments through history sometimes help us and sometimes hurt us. This is especially true when talking about a history as long as that of the Christian faith.
As for what’s hurt us, check out my blog post called “A Clear Picture of Church History.” It introduces the reasons why our modern perspective is clouded by misconceptions about what happened in the past.
My personal journey into church history has led me to change a number of things about how I “do church.” Raised in a solid Presbyterian family, I became serious about my faith in Christ while in high school. My desire to follow God eventually took me to seminary and the thought that I would become a church pastor, but that end game never materialized. After graduating from Fuller Theological Seminary, I wound up following God into the Christian publishing industry. It worked well with the other interests I had honed in previous schooling—a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and MBA in marketing from the same.
Church-wise, after getting married, my wife and I enjoyed a wide range of involvement—Foursquare, Congregational, Presbyterian (she grew up Presbyterian, too), independent home church, Southern Baptist.
I discovered there was more to God’s work in keeping an original church together than I had ever been led to believe.
When I was in my thirties, a former seminary buddy of mine introduced me to a way of looking at church—through examining its history—that I’d never seen before. Apparently, I discovered, there was more to God’s work in keeping an original church together than I had ever been led to believe. So, I began studying early church history through original writings and the different way of looking at church that inspired. The search led me to what is now known as the Eastern Orthodox Church, a surprising (to a dyed-in-the-wool, born-and-bred, evangelical American Protestant) purveyor of the most ancient teachings and practices of Christianity.
Discovering Orthodoxy has been such a life-enriching asset to my relationship with Christ that I can’t resist sharing with anyone and everyone what I’ve found. That discovery involves some of the principles we get to talk about.