The American Churchman: Conservatives and Nostalgia

Opening Announcements and Conference Promotion

Welcome to the American Churchman podcast. I was muted there for a minute. Hope everyone's doing well. And coming into the stream, Matthew Pearson is gonna be here soon, probably like five or 10 minutes, but I'm on my own schedule, unfortunately, because I got a lot going on.

I got a pack tonight. I'm gonna see some of you, I guess, in Texas over the next few days. And just, I don't know, just a lot of things. So hopefully you're all enjoying the beginning of spring. I know I am.

I'm really not missing the winter weather. We'll put it that way. I have just a few announcements before we get started. We are still having a conference coming up, Christianity and the Founding. You can still sign up.

It is not too late to sign up. And you can go to Christianityandthefounding .com if you are wanting to come to that. Here's what it looks like. That's not what it looks like. This is what it looks like.

And if you scroll down, there's a registration. There's also a VIP dinner. So if you wanna come out, I mean, this is honestly a steal. If you wanna come to the VIP dinner, it's only 50 bucks. Registration's only 30 bucks.

We try to do things for at cost. We don't, we're not making money off of any of this stuff. We just want people to be able to come. Great lineup of speakers. Sam Smith, who is the chairman of the history department at Liberty University is gonna be here.

Stephen Wolf, author of the case for Christian nationalism. Jared Lovell and Zachary Garris, both pastors. Sean McGowan, also a pastor. Actually, Zach and Sean are going to be introducing a new book, as I understand it, that they have coming out about Southern Presbyterians, which will be fun.

You can go to church at Jacob Tanner's church on Sunday. I'll be there, of course, and Paul Godfrey from Chronicles Magazine. And this is really just a history conference. We want to understand what does it mean when we say we had a Christian founding or America is a Christian country?

What does that even mean? And so we're gonna be exploring some of these things and some of the traditions, the various Christian traditions that have led us to where we are today. And the schedules there, that might be modified very slightly, but for the most part, that's what it's gonna look like.

And so it's Friday night into Saturday. So we'll see you there if you're coming and looking forward to it. You can also, if you want to support TrueScript, go to truescript .com, scroll down, all the way to the bottom.

There's this little bitty tab that says donate. We are a 501C3, you can donate there. You can also publish with us by clicking that publish tab. And we really appreciate the great writers that we've gotten to know.

And there's a lot of great content. I don't know if you've noticed this on the TrueScript website. There's really a lot of great content. And this was something I thought about years ago, wanting to see, and it's here now.

I mean, we do have these short form articles that I think communicate well to your average person, your average Christian going to church in a bite-sized format. They're articles that encourage you from the Bible, from history, from, I mean, we tackle political things sometimes, but literature, it's all kinds of things.

And of course the American Churchman podcast is more geared for men, but we have things geared for everyone on the TrueScript website. So check it out. We have some cool articles that are featured right now.

Of course, the one that's featured right now most prominently is a review of my book, Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age. And I actually, this is our first publication, really. I went through TrueScript Press.

So hopefully there'll be more books to come through TrueScript Press. And today the article we're gonna be focusing on the most is called A Biblical Case for Nostalgia by Matt Borish. And so we're gonna get into that a little bit.

I don't know if some of you might've noticed if you're following me on X, this was like maybe a week or two ago. I posted this AI generated image. I didn't, I actually already did a video on this for my other podcast.

I didn't know it was AI generated at first. It was just something I saw on Facebook,.

Copied it, put it on X.

And I was kind of like, I think I put just, this is the world our grandparents, or the world of our grandparents. And this got, this became like a dividing line, like people who thought this was this really, I guess, sunshine and roses depiction of the 1950s and others who thought, no, that's what the 1950s were like.

And it's interesting because like, there's a political fracture, but it's, the fracture was along the lines of how do we remember our own past? What kinds of things do we emphasize? And so we're gonna talk about that from a biblical standpoint.

Technical Difficulties and Engagement Update

But we do have Matthew Pearson with us now. So I'm gonna let him in. Hey Matthew, how's it going? Can you hear me all right?

How you doing? I can hear you, can you hear me?

Yeah, doing good, doing good. So I don't know if we've had you on since you are engaged. So congratulations. Well, thank you, John.

I appreciate that. Yeah, it's good to be back.

Yeah.

What was that?

I said, I don't know. I can't remember. Maybe we did do one podcast, but if not, congratulations.

No, I haven't done one since, but thank you.

Yeah, so you're on a really important journey and I think probably really excited right now and no longer a single Matthew Pearson, all the girls just, you just heart broke everyone,.

But that's okay.

I mean, you're very happy. And when's the date? Do you have the date yet? Or can you announce? You may not be able to announce the date publicly.

That's okay.

Can you give us a season when you're thinking of actually getting married? Can you hear me at all? Okay, Matthew. I know we were having technical problems there. What was going on there? All right, we'll let Matthew come back in the chat.

I asked him a question, but I did not get an answer yet. So hopefully I didn't offend him.

With the question I asked.

He's like, no, it's a secret date. I can't share. All right, well, since we're waiting for him to reconnect, let's get into this piece a little bit. This is from Matt Borish and it's called A Biblical Case for Nostalgia.

A Biblical Case for Nostalgia. Hopefully everyone can hear me. Okay, Matthew's back in. All right, Matthew, can you hear me now? You're muted, man. I don't know.

Can you hear me now?

I can hear you now. I can hear you now. That was weird. I don't know what happened there. I asked you a question then I was like, oh no, maybe he's not allowed to say. And then I was like, oh, and I'm not even hearing him.

Maybe I said, so I was just asking you around the time you were getting married, how long are you waiting until then?

Yeah, so that's gonna be around September 20th. I think there's just bad lag on our end. So when you asked and I answered, it didn't go through. But if you can hear me now, fine.

I can.

Hopefully you got that day.

All right, good deal. So all right, so you got a summer ahead of you here, but that's exciting, man. Congratulations. So we do have this article I wanna talk about, but we normally, since you're here, we'll start with it.

We normally do an attribute of God and I think we're doing mercy today. So mercy, obviously, similar to grace in some ways, but it's different. So take it away. Can you hear me?

I can hear you now. My connection is really shoddy again.

Okay.

Sorry about this.

No, you're good.

I can hear, I can see and hear you. So I think you're good. So we're talking about mercy. So we've got mercy.

Yep.

Okay, John, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm going to present this attribute for us and for our audience. After doing so, I'm going to quickly leave, check my router or whatever, because this is not fun, and then I will be back.

So does that sound like a good plan for us?

Sounds good.

Okay, excellent.

Awesome.

I'll start going through this.

Yeah.

Anyways, I'm happy to be back. So sorry for going MIA for like two weeks since the engagement. Life got a little busy, of course. But like I said, I'm happy to be back. So our attribute today, as John said, that we're discussing is the mercy of God.

The Mercy of God

So we'll be talking about mercy as an attribute of the Lord. So to begin with, I'll start, as I always do, reading two Bible verses, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament, touching on God's mercy.

So our first Bible verse will come from Micah 7, verse 18, where the text reads, Who is a God like unto thee that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever because he delighteth in mercy.

And then 2 Corinthians 1, verse 3 reads, Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. Now today, as I always do, right before I do these, I like to cite my sources.

So the first source, this is the common one that we always go to every time we discuss an attribute of God, but that'll be Richard Moeller's Theological Dictionary of Greek and Latin Terms. So my primary definition of mercy comes from that.

And then the second attribute I had today is, or not the second attribute, the second source that I'm using today, I was actually just perusing just a little website. It's called Reform Books Online. If you ever wanna get access to like very niche reform literature online that hasn't been printed before, you can go there along with Post-Reformation Digital Library.

But I was kind of browsing through there and I found a very interesting work written by a reformed divine from the 17th century named William Bates. And this book is called The Harmony of Divine Attributes and the Contrivance and Accomplishment of Man's Redemption.

So very long title. But those are the two sources I'm using to sort of discuss mercy. So as I said, mercy is the attribute we're talking about. And the way that Richard Moeller sort of defines the mercy of God in accordance with the reformed divines is that the mercy of God is that according to which God has compassion on his fallen creatures and their inability to return to him.

So it's that which God, basically it's that which God has compassion on his fallen creatures and their inability to return to him. This attribute is essentially, it sort of is an extension of God's goodwill or his good willing towards creatures.

And as an attribute, this is a very relational attribute in that mercy requires an object on whom the subject exercises this mercy. Because God the Father doesn't have mercy on the Son or the Spirit. They don't have mercy on one another because they're not proper objects of mercy because mercy would sort of be a passing over or compassion for a fallen creature.

And because no members of the Godhead can be fallen, that's a literal impossibility. There's no, God doesn't exercise mercy towards himself or other persons within the Godhead. This is only something which is exercised towards fallen creatures.

And in this sense, it's a very relational attribute. Specifically, it's a post-lapsarian attribute in a sense. And when I say that, because all that is in God is God, when we speak about mercy, we speak about it as a divine affection, meaning that it as an attribute is predicated of God only metaphorically because when we think about exercising mercy, mercy is in a sense, it's partially an emotion.

You feel merciful towards somebody. And God does not experience like real emotions or mercy in the same way that mutable creatures who feel these emotions where they change their mind or things like that.

God doesn't feel those sort of emotions in the same way that his creatures do. And this is because God is simple. He's immutable. He is without change. So when we predicate mercy of God, we do so metaphorically in the same way we predicate anger of God.

When the scriptures speak about how God has rage or anger, he's not actually feeling angry because God is simple. And so when we speak about the mercy of God, something that we have to realize is, I'm kind of just jumping right into the sort of application of this attribute in our lives is that the mercy of God is one of his most important attributes.

William Bates actually argues that it's one of the most important attributes in the economy of salvation because it's the key to salvation for sinners because while we justly deserve punishment without pardon, like the fallen angels, yet God in his mercy, through his compassion, he willed to forgive sinners through the death of his son.

So it's through the mercy of God that grace is exercised upon man in order to translate him from a state of sin and death instead into a state of grace. And so for the rest of discussing this attribute, there's a quote that I wanna read from this work by William Bates, The Harmony of the Divine Attributes, these long titles, In the Contrivance and Accomplishments of Man's Redemption, where William Bates states the object of it, that is mercy, is man in his lap state, that means his fallen state.

In this respect, it excels the goodness that created him at the beginning and the creation as there was no object to invite, so nothing repugnant to man's being and happiness. The dust of the earth did not merit such an excellent condition as it received from the pure bounty of God, but there is no moral unworthiness.

But the grace of the gospel hath a different object, the wretched and unworthy, and it produces different operations. It is healing and medicinal, ransoming and delivering, and hath a peculiar character among the divine attributes.

It is goodness that crowns the angels, but it is mercy, the sanctuary of the guilty and refuge of the miserable that saves man. The scripture hath consecrated the name of grace in a special manner to signify the most excellent and admirable favor of God in recovering us from our justly deserved misery.

We are, quote, justified freely by his grace, Romans 3, 24. Quote, by grace we are saved, Ephesians 2, verse 5. Quote, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, John 1, 17. It is, quote, the grace of God that bring us salvation, Titus 2, 11.

And this is gloriously manifested toward man in that, one, considered in himself, he is altogether unworthy of it. Two, as compared with fallen angels who are left under perfect, irremediable misery. All right, so that's the end of that quote.

And the big takeaway from this attribute of mercy is that mercy is directly connected with God's grace and his gracefulness, because without mercy, we would never receive pardon. And this is also a big thing with this concept of unconditional election, that God doesn't foresee the future, look at somebody who exercises a work or like responds to God's grace in a particular way and says, okay, I'm gonna elect this person as salvation.

No, God looks at nothing. God simply looks at us, not considering anything we have done or anything of that nature, and just says, you are mine. I pardon your sins.

Why?

Because of the sacrifice of my son. And so mercy as an attribute, all these attributes, to meditate on all of them is to truly contemplate the love of God for us and the grace of God for us. But it is mercy in particular, contemplate, always like, I think it was Calvin who talks about how like studying theology is almost like, is itself like anthropology.

It's studying yourself, it's looking in the mirror and seeing how God treats us. And I think mercy is an attribute, really causes us to look at ourselves where every time that we commit any sort of sin, be it even a heinous sin, we can always know this deserves punishment from God, yet God in his mercy, pardons me.

And in my place, the son takes my punishment. And so that's, as I always say, that is the divine attribute of mercy in a nutshell.

You know, as a kid, I was always told grace is, or mercy, grace is unmerited favor, right? And mercy is withholding something we deserve, right? Those are like the very simplistic descriptions. And it seems like that's correct.

That's exactly what they are. And we always pray for grace and mercy. I find myself, I don't know if it was because I was trained to pray that way, but those are the two things that I'm always asking God for.

Just give me grace, give me mercy, withhold bad stuff that I deserve and give me good things that I don't deserve and all based, of course, upon Christ and his work. But yeah, mercy is one of these things that I was actually, so the last two weekends, I had funerals that I had to go to, both in separate Catholic churches.

Interestingly enough, I know Catholics say that like they have a one true church and they're all unified and everything. These are two very different services. One was very low church, one was pretty high church.

It wasn't Latin, but it was, I felt like they were gonna break out into Latin any moment. And anyway, one of the things that they both prayed for the priests was mercy, right? And on these departed souls.

And even after they're dead, just praying. And of course, that's because of their doctrine of purgatory and they still think that there's an influence that we can have on someone after they've passed away, while they're in this holding place, determining when, well, depending on the priest, I guess, but I think official Catholic doctrine is whether they go to heaven or hell.

So anyway, it struck me as just like a big contrast because like in Protestant circles, and I think this is what the Bible teaches, like mercy is just something that you're given, like in the ultimate sense, in the sense of like being justified by Christ.

Mercy, everything that comes with that, mercy is just something that God gives to you. You don't deserve it, just like he does with grace. So all these punishments you do deserve, you don't actually experience.

And the term mercy though, is used in other traditions to denote something that's not like, I don't know, I guess I was thinking like, it doesn't seem like it's quite mercy. Like we have to do all these things to obtain the mercy.

Like there's some kind of payment and exchange that we do, where we give God something, and then he's now going to withhold something we deserve. But it's like, we're the ones that are like convincing God and like turning God's face away from his wrath.

Like we're doing this because of our works and efforts. And anyway, it struck me as like something that didn't stand out as true mercy, as you're describing it. Like true mercy is really something that is from God, and we don't have influence over it in the sense of like, like we can't bargain with God to make him have mercy on us or something like that, right?

So yeah, good thoughts. Just wanted to share that. Anyway, I don't know if you've, have you been to Catholic services ever?

Yes, I've been to a few of them. Some of my family is a Roman Catholic, so I've been to a few of their services and stuff like that. So yeah, I'm familiar with like how some of it goes on. I've like studied a bit of Catholic theology and things like that, so.

Yeah, yeah.

So it is very different though, both concepts of grace and mercy. Well, let's go to the article, and it seems like the internet connection is doing okay. So we're gonna

A little bit.

I think we're fine. So fingers crossed.

Nostalgia, Memory, and the Biblical Case for Looking Back

So the article is called the Biblical Case for Nostalgia, and Matt Borish wrote it. Matt Borish is a faithful supporter and great friend of the podcast and TruthScript. And it's, well, why don't we just go through it?

I mean, it's not that long of an article, and there are some biblical things that he brings up and that we can even add to it. But he says, during the past few decades, life in the Western world has undergone an enormous cultural transformation, family structure, the towns we inhabit, societal norms, and even how we eat have radically changed.

For many with conservative values, this change has not been positive. We are emotionally stressed longing for the good old days when life was simpler, more wholesome, less plastic and happier. We want idyllic towns, kids playing outside, the French fries fried in beef tallow.

In short, we feel and want nostalgia. The word nostalgia has an interesting etymology. It is a combination of two Greek words, nostos, meaning return, or homecoming, and algos, meaning pain. The pain of longing for returning home or more simply homesickness.

On social media, incidentally, one of these radical transformations people often relay, yeah, relay their feelings of nostalgia through memes and pictures. Mountain landscapes, cities with well-dressed and well-ordered citizens, and county fairs with nuclear families having fun are a few examples.

We are broadcasting their desire for a world that once was, and many believe will never return. Reactions to these are varied. Some say get over it, the world has changed, move on. Others say the world of nostalgia isn't even real, it is an idealized fiction.

Still others say this nostalgia is something to be ashamed of as humanity has rejected its transgressive past and has progressed toward a future with more egalitarian principles and freedoms. The bottom line is that for many, nostalgia is a dirty word that promotes backwardness and spiritual lethargy.

I would argue for the opposite, that not only is nostalgia a positive virtue, but it is also in a certain sense a biblical command. And I think I'm pretty sure that Matt Borish wrote this, Matthew, because of what Mike Cosper from Christianity Today said about me about a week, week and a half ago, when I shared this meme.

I don't know if you were here when I was talking about that, but he used the word nostalgia and described this longing for the 1950s or that kind of stability as this fake nostalgia that I guess it's not actually real, we just have to manufacture it, we have to use AI and rely on artificial things to convince us that this was once how things were, because things were never really that good.

That's the assumption behind it. Things were always pretty bad in America. So I'm kind of curious to hear the Zoomer angle on this, because I know for me, I do have some 90s nostalgia. Like I do look back before smartphones and even before internet, like we had dial-up, but I can remember before dial-up.

And I do have nostalgia for that. It was a different world in many ways, but I know you've probably grown up since you can remember people had cell phones and internet and I don't know. I mean, you probably though, do you have things that when you look back, you think of, oh, like the early 2000s, those were the days.

Yeah, I would say that a lot of Zoomer nostalgia. So for myself personally, I always grew up like, there were always like computers around and not necessarily like, I guess, smartphones, as in like an iPhone or something like that.

But you had things like the BlackBerry and all of that. And so a lot of Zoomer nostalgia is primarily gonna be like pop cultural things. And so sometimes if you're a fellow brain rot reels consumer, such as myself, and you go on Instagram reels and you scroll for ungodly periods of time when you should be doing your schoolwork, sometimes you'll pop up on these like Zoomer nostalgia things where we'll show like clips from old shows or old toys or old video games.

And that one's a big one for me because growing up, I was athletic, I played outside, I played baseball, football, soccer, I threw shot and discus, I was an athletic kid, but I also, I played my fair share of video games and I can't lie, John, I often get like this, if I hear like the right Minecraft song, I might tear up a little bit because I just, I think back to that or I see certain video games.

And so it's kind of weird. Maybe somebody has talked about this before, but yeah, a lot of Zoomer nostalgia is primarily pop cultural, but I've like experienced like little bits of nostalgia for Tampa because I only moved away from Tampa here to Central Florida for a seminary back in like July I moved here.

But even like since leaving in that short little period of time, like I go by places, I'm like, oh, the Barnes and Noble on North Delmabry just shut down. And it was there when I was young and it's weird because I went there growing up or, oh, this place that I used to go by, this little park that was always super popular is there's nobody out there anymore.

Or, oh, I spend holidays at home with family and barely anybody's putting up Christmas lights or Halloween is just a dud. Those kinds of things are very weird because like these sort of like communities that even when I was growing up, it was very vibrant.

Like sometimes they're still active and things like that, but they take on like a whole like new sort of feel. So despite being a Zoomer and having a lot of what I already grew up with or whatever, I do still get these little bits of nostalgia that will kick in.

So yeah, but again, lots of Zoomer nostalgias and is very pop culturally based. And I would say that for most people, a lot of nostalgia is not just gonna be like actual culture and stuff, but a lot of like popular culture things as well, especially with the 90s and certain movies or video games that were out during that time.

So it's not too, too different.

Yeah, I wouldn't think it would be like terrible. And like pop culture is something that people share in common. They watch movies or play video games. Like you could be raised in different areas and still enjoy those things.

So that's what I would expect to be emphasized. It's not until you have to sit down and really ponder yourself what makes your unique life unique, like different that you start getting nostalgic for those other things.

Like you just mentioned the park. But I worked as a furniture repairman in people's houses. I was fixing furniture for people from about 2011 to 2021. And I feel like somewhere in the middle of that, I saw a big switch from kids playing outside.

Like when I first started, I still saw, I had to watch myself. I get into like a cul-de-sac, a certain neighborhood, I'm like, I gotta watch out. I don't wanna hit a kid. Like they're gonna be playing basketball or baseball or something on a skateboard or whatever.

And somewhere around like 2015, it all stopped. I didn't see it anymore. And of course it was nothing like when I was a kid, like we had like 15 people in the neighborhood would all be playing outside.

And our parents wouldn't even know like whose house we were at. Like that was, I guess that world. But anyway, I stopped seeing people, kids play outside. It just like disappeared overnight. And I get nostalgic for that.

I think about like, oh, that was really nice when kids were not just even in their backyard, like they were in their front yard or on the street and they were with other kids and what happened? Well, the world changed obviously.

And there's a million things like that we could probably point to even in our lives. But the other thing I've noticed though is there is a nostalgia. And I know I feel it to some extent. And I think Zoomers, you could tell me if I'm wrong on this, but I think Zoomers also feel the sense of like brokenness or being deprived of their birthright almost.

And like, have you ever gone on these YouTube channels or they're probably in the reels on like Instagram where it's like, you're at your grandma's house in 1985 and nothing's changed. Like you woke up, it was all a bad dream.

You know what I'm talking about? Oh my gosh. Some of those videos, oh, they get you. You're like, oh my goodness, that is what it looked like. And it's like half of it's AI, if not all of it. But they have like, the colors are right, the what's on TV, the car and what the car looked like.

And just, I don't know, the sounds, it's pretty wild, some of these channels. And I

John, have you ever?

Yeah.

Sorry, sorry, keep going, keep going.

I was just gonna say, and I'll let you talk. I'm thinking like I wasn't there in 1985 at my grandparents' house. But like, it tugs at me. I'm like You know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure. No, I was, I mean, this is like a little silly and not as insightful as your point, but have you ever been to Chuck E. Cheese?

Oh yeah, many times.

Yeah.

One of the weirdest cases where I was just like, I felt like something was taken from me and it was so small, was I had a bunch of, you know, my senior year of high school class, we were a bunch of silly goobers.

And so for our little senior, like little mini senior trip, we had like a bigger senior trip or whatever, but we all wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese,.

Relive nostalgia.

We're graduating high school. It completely changed. It's like not at all the same. They heavily modernize. And it's just like, I think of those like memes where it's like, look what they took from you.

And I just took a Chuck E. Cheese. But yeah, no, it's wild. Even in like the little things where it's just like, oh yeah, I can relive some childhood stuff. And yeah, so.

No

I would never be in a ball pit. Like

Yeah, yeah.

I never experienced that.

And that was like everywhere. Every like fast food restaurant had to have a ball pit, but yeah, like, and this can go back even further for like the 1950s or even before that, people will post old pictures or videos.

And it's, I think what it communicates is stability and order and maybe even hierarchy that, look, things used to work better. Maybe not perfect, but there was something better and you're missing that in your life.

Don't you want order and stability and that kind of thing, a tie to the land and to the people around you. So, so anyway, Matthew, he, Matt Burish talks about this and he goes on, he says, he talks about Nehemiah and Ezra, reintroducing scripture.

He says, God gives us another example of the virtues of nostalgia in Nehemiah chapter eight. Nehemiah had just completed rebuilding the walls of the city of Jerusalem after he had petitioned King Artaxerxes through tears.

In fact, the whole reason Nehemiah wanted to rebuild the walls was because of longing for returning to the traditions and land of his fathers. Nehemiah called an assembly and had Ezra read the law of God in the hearing of the people.

Many heard it for the first time. The words of the scripture were so novel to the returning exiles that they wept. Afterwards, however, Nehemiah told them the following, go eat the festival foods, drink the sweet drinks and send portions to him who has nothing prepared for this day is holy to the Lord.

Do not be grieved for the joy of the Lord is your refuge. And all the people went away to eat, drink, to send portions and to celebrate a great feast because they understood the words which had been made known to them.

The Israelites rejoiced in the rediscovery of the scriptures because they knew that this was excellent, noble and worthy of praise. Their ways had returned to them and they could begin with a fresh start in both their societal and spiritual lives.

So I thought of some other things in scripture. So he gives a positive case here. I think he's right about Nehemiah wanting to return to something that he knew was good and right. They were deprived of it, but there's also some warnings.

So I wanted to read for you. This is Ecclesiastes 7, 10. It says, do not say, why is it that the former days were better than these? For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this. And that's an interesting like warning.

Psalm 143, five says, I remember the old days I meditate on all your doings. I'm used on the works of your hands. So there's a positive reference to it. And then you have obviously in Lamentations remembering negative things.

Like, you know, you have bad memories too. It's not just like all memories are good. And Isaiah 43 says, do not call to mind the former things or ponder the things of the past. Behold, I will do something new.

Now or spring forth, will you not be aware of it? So the only thing I wanted to say about this, and there's probably some other verses we could bring up is there probably needs to be a distinction here.

Like there is in the Bible, a kind of knowledge.

That is very good.

Obviously remembering the things that the Lord has done. And I can do that with my own life looking back. I think remembering things like stability and order and hierarchy and just family gatherings and some of the good things that used to exist.

Like that's very good. There is a danger though in making that, like in losing yourself in that so that you can't see what's actually in front of you. Cause God puts you here, right? God puts you in poverty in 2025.