Correcting the Evils of History

This past week I had a conversation about history with some friends.  We often have the tendency to look at history in terms of black and white.  We see some people groups as evil and others as good.  Yet in my amateur study of history, it seems the situation is often not that complex.  It is not a matter of some people groups being mostly good and some being mostly evil.  It is a matter of all people being evil.

It is easy to look at the evils of our ancestors and feel bad about them.  It is even easier to look at the evils committed to our ancestors and feel like victims.  Yet all of our ancestors engaged in evil acts.  None of them were good.

A significant portion of my ancestry is from Scandinavia.  Today Scandinavians are largely thought of as a peaceful people.  Yet this was not always the case.  Scandinavians were once vicious Vikings that would travel around committing atrocities to others.  They were fierce courageous warriors, but they were also terrible evil people.

A 12th century painting of Danish Vikings invading England.

When I brought this point up in my conversation, I was asked, “What changed to cause Scandinavian culture to shift from such a violent culture to the peaceful one we see today?”

The simple answer is that Scandinavians became Christians.  Missionaries took the Gospel north, and the Vikings came to know Jesus.  The Gospel radically changed the culture in a positive way, and as a result the people of Northern Europe no longer fear invasions of large marauding Norsemen.

I want to make the world a better place, because I love people and I love the world.  Some have urged me that the way to change the world is through political activism.  Yet what government program has ever changed the hearts of men?

If the world is to be changed, our hard hearts must change first.  Only God can do that.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God."  (Ezekiel 36:26-28)

This is the solution.  Let Jesus change your hard hearts into hearts of flesh.  All of us are evil.  All of our ancestors were evil as well.  It was a heart issue for them and it is for you today as well.

“Hate cannot drive out hate.  Only Love can do that.”  -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“God is Love.” (I John 4:8)

Let future generations look back on us and say that we were a people changed by love.

Let our history be different.