Medway Today column, 27th July 2001: Living For Today, Living In The Past

I suppose it’s fitting, isn’t it? Rochester Castle, home to so much history, living in the past this week. Did you see the acts on at the first two nights of the summer concerts in the Castle Gardens? ‘I Love The Eighties’ night on Wednesday with ABC – I remember my sister borrowing their ‘The Lexicon Of Love’ from a boyfriend and forgetting to return it when they split up. Limahl – he of the hair: highlights and a mullet cut. And the inevitable tribute band, Purple Reign. 

It was the same again last night, with the ‘Soul Divas’ bill – the Three Degrees, just in case Prince Charles was passing through Medway. The Supremes – the compulsory act whose main star is long gone, another original member is dead, their shoes filled by newer singers. And Jaki Graham coming on as a late substitute for Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. 

Someone at the Council knew what they were doing, putting together these evenings. They were tapping into a popular feeling in our culture today. We live for today, we fear what tomorrow may bring, and we feel disconnected from our roots in the past. 

No wonder BBC2 has had such a success with the series ‘I Love The 70s’ and ‘I Love The 80s’ – well, apart from the ridiculous notion of Jamie Theakston as a cultural commentator. Can you believe that ‘I Love The 90s’ will be on air before the end of the year? 

We make our feeble attempts to reconnect with the past through celebrating the trivia of past decades. Maybe the present isn’t too cool, either, and we want to swim back to times before the arrivals of children and mortgages. Oh yes, the Eighties – England beating Australia at cricket. Botham in his pomp – boy did we have some fun with an Aussie lecturer at college! 

There are events in the past, from before my lifetime, that we mark in life, yet I have trouble feeling part of them. The obvious one for me is Remembrance Sunday. I was born fifteen years after World War Two, and have not experienced the deprivation my parents did as teenagers living through that time. 

Yet the outcome of World War Two affects me to this day. The sacrifice of many helped obtain the freedom I enjoy to write this very article. It explains why many European countries wanted to found what we now know as the EU (whatever that organisation’s strengths and weaknesses may be). 

The past can shape us for good. And nowhere more so than two thousand years ago when history was divided in two, BC and AD (or BCE and CE for the politically correct). Divided by the framing, torture, and execution of an innocent man just outside the capital city of a Middle East trouble spot. 

Invisible things were happening that day. The innocent man, who was also the Son of God, was dying for the sins of the world – yours and mine included. 

That may feel as remote for you as Remembrance Sunday does for me. But the effects are available – forgiveness, and an eternal purpose for our lives – because the grave couldn’t contain Jesus and he can offer all the benefits of his death to us. 

Saying ‘yes’ to Jesus doesn’t require living in the past (whatever sad impression we Christians have given at times). But that past makes sense of our present and gives hope for the future. Now who would turn down an offer like that?

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.