Theological Journal – July 20 Our Nostalgia Is Spiritually Dangerous

Why we shouldn’t worship the golden calf of the ‘pre-COVID’ days.

Jeremy Sabella writing in Christianity Today (https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/july-web-only/sabella-nostalgia-spiritually-dangerous-covid-golden-calf.html) offer some wise counsel for living through these times.

Nostalgia is the danger he is worried about. The longing for normality, connection, and meaning we have lost due to Covid-19 can, he writes, ”dredge up unresolved loss in ways that tempt us to recreate a sanitized, distorted version of the past. Wistful longing for a simpler time comes easily during this dysfunctional present. But left unchecked, that nostalgia can lead us alarmingly astray.”

It didn’t take long, after all, for the newly liberated Israelites, to betray their Liberator (divine and human), and long for the that normality, connection, and meaning that enslavement in Egypt had given them. When Moses when up the mountain to receive the tablets of the law from YHWH and was gone longer than the people were comfortable with, they pressed Aaron into creating a surrogate religious celebration (orgy) to help them negotiate the fear of freedom (Erich Fromm) YHWH’s liberation had thrust on them.

“The golden calf debacle,” writes Sabella, “was the product of willful misremembering. The house of Israel understandably missed the familiarity, the routine, and the other good aspects of the life they had built in Egypt. Their old world was gone, and their new world was a wilderness of uncertainty. But nostalgia so consumed them that they overlooked 400 years of bondage and broke the first and second commandments in order to conjure an idealized, distorted past. They lost their moral bearings so completely that God considered wiping them out before Moses intervened (Ex. 32:11-14).

And it all started with a hankering for a good meal.”

In The Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis notes that the work of the Spirit takes place in the present. We must  “obey . . . the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.” Sin, then, directs our attention away from the present. Fear, ambition, lust, most vices, in fact, tempt us to rivet or attention on the future. Nostalgia, however, pushes us in

the other direction and, in contrast, seems less harmful than those vices. However, it functions the same way, breaking our connection with the present. The longer we remain thus disconnected, whatever the cause, the greater the damage to our faithfulness today. Nostalgia, in particular, in its sense of pleasant harmlessness, is especially dangerous in this regard.

“Unbridled nostalgia causes us to cling to the golden calf that reminds us of the past rather than recognize the pillars of cloud and fire guiding us through our uncertain present” and the longer that idolatry occurs the warning of the Psalmist becomes pertinent, “Those who make them (idols) will be like them, and so will all who trust in them” (Ps. 135:15-18). Locked in a misremembered past. Disconnected from a faithful present. Unable to trust and wait. Fearful of the freedom that is ours in Christ.

How do we keep nostalgia from thus strangling us during this time of Covid-19? Sabella notes that need to begin with honesty. Whatever we believe our pre-Covid-19 life was is gone.  “It ended as epidemic became pandemic; as Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd breathed their last. No economic miracle or executive order can bring back human lives, our sense of safety, or our rhythms and routines.” The grief evoked by such honesty must be faced and processed. The “worldly sorrow” that leads to death must be resisted and the Spirit allowed to work that “godly sorrow” in us that leads to repentance (2 Cor. 7:10).

Lewis says we must “obey . . . the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.” How might we do that in these days? Sabella shares his experience:

In our current environment, the crosses are obvious. The pleasures may be harder discern, but spiritually speaking, vital to acknowledge and appreciate. I have found that they manifest for me in old friendships rekindled via laptop screens. They crop up in the daily walks my wife and I take to stave off cabin fever in our small New Jersey town. As we wander nearby streets, we stop and chat with neighbors far more frequently than before. I’m seeing service sector workers in a new light—grocery store clerks, mail carriers, truck drivers, trash collectors—and appreciating the ways they make modern life possible. I’m learning to enjoy everyday tasks like cooking and yard work. These ‘present pleasures’ will vary from person to person. But they may very well be the manna that sustains us.”

The church trades in hope, not nostalgia. The Bible is hardnosed about hope. It arises when God’s people are having a hard time: “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance produces character; character produces hope.” Hope happens only when the people look their present full in the face trusting in the Spirit to remain there waiting for God’s next move rather than retreating to the “phantoms of an idyllic past” to avoid that hard waiting. Sabella puts it well: “Giving into fantasies of the past cheats God’s people of the opportunity to cultivate hope that overcomes despair.”

His final paragraph we should copy and paste on our bathroom mirrors, refrigerators, to our tv remotes, the inside cover of our Bibles, wherever we can to regularly remind ourselves of its wisdom.

“Our comfortable, settled American life has given way to a season of wilderness. Wilderness spaces unsettle us to our core by confronting us with how contingent our lives are. The manna God provides in such spaces does not taste like what we’re used to. But it nourishes us in ways that the rich fare of our previous settled life could not. As our current crises carry on, we will be sorely tempted to recreate an idealized, selectively remembered past rather than attend to the needs and concerns of the present. But God’s people must discipline themselves to focus on the here and now. For that is where the work of the Spirit unfolds, making all things new.”