Nostalgia

 October 29, 2022

Nostalgia can be very dangerous. Usually, it’s seen as a useless, but harmless activity. After all, who hasn’t longed for the simpler days of their childhood, forgetting that by nature, childhood is generally simpler; little responsibility, everything provided, with no weighty decisions required. I remember Saturday mornings with Roy Rogers, Sky King, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, along with a variety of old-school cartoons like Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, and others. Birthdays and Christmases were special times, and summer Saturdays would be spent outdoors with friends from morning till sundown. There were no school shootings, no drugs, no gender dysphoria, at least, none that we knew of.

It’s easy to long for those days, and nostalgia is big business. But longing for the easy times of the past can lure us into ignoring our present blessings. In Numbers 11, the children of Israel were tired of eating manna. They longed, as they said, for “the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.” —Numbers 11:5 In short, they yearned for the “good old days.”

But in doing so, they ignored their redemption and despised their freedom and God’s provision. Nostalgia caused them to forget the drudgery and oppression of their slavery, and blinded them to the goodness of God in their present circumstances. It does the same to us, too. As long as I am looking back to Egypt, I am not looking forward to the Promised Land. I am missing out on the glorious future God has in store for those willing to walk with him through the wilderness of this world.

St. Paul warns us about a backward-oriented view:

“Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

—Philippians 3:13-14

Be wary of nostalgia. It can keep you bound to a past that no longer exists, unable to reach forth to the future God has planned. Letting that happen is a sin. God is reaching out to us from his future, not from our past.