I have found myself on a bit of a nostalgic kick lately. My wife and I have been watching shows from the 1980s and 1990s. I made a Spotify playlist of my favorite songs from the late 1990s and early 2000s that I listen to regularly. Those shows and songs bring me back to childhood and years as a teenager and young adult. I find myself saying things that I used to hear other people say like, “they don’t make good shows like they used to” or “back in my day they made music, not whatever noise kids are playing these days.” I guess those television commercials about homeowners becoming like their parents are all too real! (Not that becoming like your parents is a bad thing – love you mom and dad!).
I’m not sure what exactly prompted this journey down memory lane. Maybe it was crossing the 40 year old barrier a few years ago …. and then finding out recently that this number marks the start of “middle age.” Maybe it was the realization that I am now the parent of a teenager and feeling totally confused by youth culture.
I might not be able to pinpoint a particular cause for my “trip down memory lane,” but I can definitely say that I am not the only one who goes on this journey. In fact, it seems like every generation is concerned about the work ethic and values of the emerging generation and thinks that things were better back “in my day.” This observation made me reflect a bit more upon the concept of “nostalgia,” which is commonly defined as “excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” You may or may not be surprised to hear that my ponderings ended up taking a theological turn, as I saw how the Bible reveals the reason for and draw of nostalgia; it also shows us a better way of thinking about the past, present, and future.
Nostalgia Talks About the “Good Ol’ Days”
At its root, nostalgia seems built upon the premise that a previous era of life was better than what we have now. While it could just look back fondly on past years and good things about it, it typically does so either as an escape from various pressures or challenges that one is currently facing or as an ideal that should be restored. Thus, it seems to assume that things once were good and that things are not as good now. Of course, people have different feelings on what is worse and when things were better, but this root of seeing the past as an ideal to which the present does not measure up is the same regardless of the era or time that one wishes to return.
But How Good Were the “Good Ol’ Days”?
However, our memories or thoughts of that earlier era are a bit skewed in that we look at the good things about that time but typically forget about the bad things. For example, at times I look back fondly on my childhood and teenage years, forgetting that there were some challenging moments as I tried to figure out who I was and my place in the world. We do the same things about earlier eras. We may say that life seemed so much easier before everyone had a smartphone, but it was also very difficult to get a hold of people when you needed to. People died as a result of not being able to contact others. Another example of this tendency to only look back and remember the good things and to forget the bad is how the people of Israel looked back at their time in Egypt. They recalled that time as being good because they had food and clothing, but they forgot that they were slaves!
Christians can do the same thing, as I was recently reminded when reading a book by Nadya Williams called, Cultural Christians in the Early Church: A Historical and Practical Introduction to Christians in the Greco-Roman World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2023). The author notes how we often think of the early church as being the ideal church in that it was filled with people boldly living out their faith. This leads to calls for us to be more like the “New Testament church.” However, examination of both the New Testament and early church history shows many Christians who struggled with the temptations that came in their age such as greed, lust, and conformity to the culture around them. The early church was messy just like the church of today.
The True Reality Behind Our Desire for The Good Ol’ Days
Therefore, we need to be mindful that the period which we refer to as the “good ol’ days” may not have been quite as great as we remember them to be. However, that does not mean that there is no such thing as the “good ol’ days.” In fact I think our longing for them points us to the fact that they do exist. We just need to look even farther back to even older days to find the “ol’ days.”
Our longing for “better days” is really a longing to be in the Garden of Eden, as life there were the only days in which life was really all good as there was no sin. Every era since then has been marked by sin and its curse in some way, shape, or form; there has never been a perfect era in human history. The longing to “return” to this earlier time also reflects biblical teaching in that what we see at the end of time is a “return to Eden,” as the city that is described in Revelation 21-22 sounds a lot like Eden in terms of its tree and garden-like nature. This vision, however, shows that the goal is not simply the restoration of the past but also a transformation of it into something even better. When Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden, they weren’t instructed not to touch anything and to leave everything as they found it. Rather, they were told to rule and subdue the earth, to develop it in line with God’s purposes. This vision is finally fulfilled in the new heavens and the new earth.
We should neither over-idealize the past, but we also should not ignore it and what it might teach us. We can learn from the positive and negative examples we see in the past, of good things that people did but also of the way that sin infected the choices and values of previous generations. We should be inspired by the good things they did and see their errors as warnings to us as we live in the present as we long for the awesome “new day” to come that is even better than the only true “good ol’ days” that were seen in Eden.
Questions about the Bible or theology? Email them to Pastor Brian at Theology@WeAreFaith.org. You can also email to be added to the list that receives weekly emails with our blog posts.
