During my short time in ministry, I’ve served overseas with the International Mission Board (IMB), worked at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS), and have now served on staff as the senior pastor of two churches. In each of these settings, which span continents and involve people of varied backgrounds, one surprising constant shows up without invitation or effort: nostalgia.
Those Were the Days
The idea of nostalgia has been around as long as humanity, but it seems to have been coined by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer in the late 17th century. He noticed that soldiers serving far from home were highly distressed and longed to return to their homes. A recent article in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience observes that “the view of nostalgia as a disease persevered in the 18th and 19th centuries. By the turn of the 20th century, the perception of nostalgia as a psychiatric or psychosomatic disorder was well-entrenched.” Nostalgia finds each of us throughout our lives as we long to return to a previous moment when life was easier, lighter, more enjoyable, or simply different than our present.
With the IMB, nostalgia sounded like a longing for yesteryear’s ease, prices, and simplicity. In the Czech Republic, the fall of communism had created wide paths for the Gospel, but the hardened hearts of a people oppressed for generations would not be easily overcome. Too many people chose the freedom of capitalism instead of the freedom offered in Christ. The complexities and inherent difficulties of ministry in a post-Christian, secular society left missionaries longing for the simplicity of “the good ol’ days.”
Due to the transient nature of life and work on campus at SWBTS, nostalgia took a wide variety of forms. Employees recalled former administrations, organizations they had worked with in the past, and a number of other experiences by which they evaluated their present. Rarely did this endeavor leave them with a neutral evaluation of their present condition, but most likely they would bemoan the spiritual climate, the administrative decisions, or the suit-and-tie dress code.
Ministry in the world of the local church has a similarly predictable pattern of nostalgia. The dulcet tones of nostalgia in the local church recall lionized former pastors, dearly departed saints, and the incomparable work of the past, all of which forms an implicit rubric for future endeavors. If left unchecked, nostalgia will empty the present of joy and erode people’s desire to walk towards the hope of the future.
While there are a number of Scriptures we might ask to redirect our thoughts, there is one source which offers a window into our predicament and a corrective for it: the book of Haggai.
Disappointment, despite Obedience
Haggai is one of those books of the Bible that could show up in the bonus round of a Bible drill. Hidden in plain sight near the end of the Old Testament, its two chapters give us a window into our own hearts as much as they shed light on God’s people living their best post-exilic life.
Commissioned with rebuilding the Temple, God’s people have chosen to meet their own needs ahead of obedience to their God-given task. Nearly two decades had passed since the exiles returned from Babylon, but their progress had been lackluster. The book opens with God’s assessment of their efforts. Essentially, the people have decided it’s not the right time to rebuild God’s house, but it is of the utmost importance that they watch another episode of Fixer Upper and get the shiplap up on their own living room walls.
God encourages the people to make what looks like an obvious connection from our vantage point (isn’t it always easier to spot problems in other people’s lives?): their efforts to provide for themselves were being divinely frustrated due to their misplaced priorities and lack of faithful obedience to God. His instruction to them in 1:7 is to consider their ways and ultimately to get busy doing what they were supposed to be doing in the first place, so that God might be glorified. Thankfully, they hear and obey the Word of the Lord. The people, with a little bit of encouragement and a renewed sense of clarity, find themselves working with all diligence to rebuild the temple.
If we were to detour to the book of 1 Kings, chapters 5-8, we could read page after page of the exquisite descriptions of the Temple constructed by Solomon. Gold on top of gold. It was something to behold and its splendor was a reflection of God’s glory. As we hold that temple in our minds, we get a sense of what they might have been thinking when God posed a question to them in Haggai 2:3: “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?” No one in the group held the image of Solomon’s temple alongside their DIY project and thought—man, we are next level. To a person, they were thinking what God saw in their hearts. It was a collective womp-womp.
Strength for Today, Bright Hope for Tomorrow
But God was not content to let them sit in their nostalgic pity party and leave it unaddressed. God does not ask us to pretend, and is not glorified through our pretending. There are moments in life that are terrible, and we would be foolish to prefer in those moments the agony of the present to the bliss of the past. In those moments of difficulty, nostalgia reminds us of the sweetness our lives once had. God does not ask us to jettison the past for the misery of the present. Notice his word to his people a few verses further,
Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not” (2:4-5).
God’s plan is to do something greater than they could imagine, and the reason they can rejoice, is because his presence is enough. His presence is what makes the house splendid. God’s presence is what makes our present possible and our future hope-filled. As we think about our past through the lens of the Gospel, it allows us to see the previously unseen hand of God, bringing his blessing into our lives and sustaining us when we were encircled by enemies. We would do well to look at our past objectively, soberly, and see its good moments as gifts from God meant to be enjoyed, not worshipped and set up as the rubric of our present or future.
A redeemed nostalgia allows a Gospel application which recalls the past, but does not seek to recreate it. It is possible, in present difficulties, to celebrate God’s faithfulness in the past without fostering bitterness or despondency. As Christians, our best days will always be ahead of us because God has created us to be homesick for a land and a country that we have never seen. We are the elect exiles of 1 Peter, moving ever closer to going home once and forever.
So, we live in the present with a nostalgia that must seem strange to the world because it isn’t set on some past we can’t recreate, but fixed on a future that is coming. It is fixed, and it is more glorious than our imaginations can comprehend. Let us not live bound to the past, muddling through the present and dreading the future, but let us see God in every age and every remembrance, redeeming nostalgia.
