A few years back, a young friend in our church became hooked on Happy Days, the television series. She envisioned the 1950s as the golden age in American life. She thought it was all Elvis and sock hops and soda fountains.

Finally, I did something really mean.

I popped her bubble.

I said, “Melissa, I became a teenager in 1953. In the ’50s, America fought the Korean War, then went through the Cold War. Our people feared being bombed by Russia every day, and racism was rampant. We were poor, cars were completely undependable, and there were no interstate highways. I wouldn’t go back there for anything.”

Okay, I should have left her alone to her daydreaming. She wasn’t hurting anyone.

The truth is I’m as much into nostalgia as anyone I know.

Nostalgia: Fantasizing about an earlier time in a way that denies the reality. That’s my definition, not one you’ll find in a book somewhere.

The passion for Sherlock Holmes owes its popularity to an idealized love for the 1890s as much as to an admiration for the observation and reasoning skills of the great detective, I wager. This fictional creation of Arthur Conan Doyle is more popular today than ever, and that’s saying something.

In The Sherlockian, Graham Moore plays to the fascination for all things Sherlock.  The protagonist of his story, Harold White, sizes up the nostalgia thing perfectly.

At one point Harold says to his friend Sarah:

I understand. There’s something….incomplete about our vision of Holmes’ time. I know it’s not real. I know that in the real 1895 there were two hundred thousand prostitutes in the city of London. Syphilis was rampant. Feces littered most major streets. Indian immigrants were locked up in Newgate on the barest suspicion that they had committed a crime. So-called homosexual acts were crimes, and they were punishable by years in prison. It was a racist culture, and a sexist one, too.

Harold takes a deep breath while he thinks of how to proceed with this line of thought.

Look, I get it. I’m a white, heterosexual man. It’s really easy for me to say, ‘Oh, wow, wasn’t the nineteenth century terrific?’ But try this. Imagine the scene: It’s pouring rain against a thick window. Outside, on Baker Street, the light from the gas lamps is so weak that it barely reaches the pavement. A fog swirls in the air, and the gas gives it a pale yellow glow, a man steps out into that dim, foggy world, and he can tell you the story of your life by the cut of your shirtsleeves. He can shine a light into the dimness, with only his intellect and his tobacco smoke to help him. Now. Tell me that’s not awfully romantic?

Sarah laughs and agrees that it definitely sounds romantic.

But the fantasy, the remembrance of that image from the 1890s, is a lie. We envision a tiny sliver of life in late Victorian London and cull out all the unpleasant parts.

Nostalgia can be fun but is always a lie.

That’s part of the attraction, I suppose. We create a land far away in a former time and make it whatever we want it to be. It exists only in our mind. It’s fun and harmless, perhaps not unlike the current craze for fantasy football or baseball.

My nostalgia–confession coming up—centers on the American homefront during World War Two. I enjoy reading the histories, biographies, first-person accounts, and novels. Especially novels.

Novels are not hampered by grim reality. Novelists pick and choose bits and pieces of reality and ignore parts that do not fit the picture they are creating.

I know this, but continue to spend good money on the books that feed my somewhat flawed memory for that period.

Born in 1940, obviously I recall nothing of the war years other than seeing uncles in uniform. I have no memories of food rationing, of scrap drives, of steam driven automobiles, of the mistreatment of the Tuskegee airmen, or any of the other hardships associated with that war. You might say I was there, but wasn’t. In some ways, I wish I had been.

A favorite movie, Since You Went Away, starring Claudette Colbert and Joseph Cotten, depicts life on the American homefront through Hollywood’s eyes. I enjoy everything about it. In the story, Colbert’s character’s husband is stationed at Camp Claiborne in Louisiana.  I’ve been there.  Just below Alexandria, LA, the historical markers announce the location of Camp Claiborne.  I drove through that area feeling like I knew someone who had been stationed there.  Which was all fantasy, of course.

I am well aware that such stories are pure romance and even rather antiseptic.

Nostalgia is found in Scripture, it might surprise you to know.

A couple of places come to mind.

A. In Numbers 11, people remembered falsely the slave days of Egypt.

The Israelites were having a tough time of it in the wilderness. The excitement of leaving Egypt under the miracle-producing hand of an Almighty God had worn off and the dailiness of their dreary existence in a barren countryside had set in. Once again, they were bellyaching to Moses.

The children of Israel wept again and said, “Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!” (Numbers 11:4-6)

Nothing but manna! Imagine.

God was dropping angel food from Heaven on them every morning, and they were griping.

As they looked back to Egypt, all these weary nomads could recall were the few pleasures they had enjoyed in that harsh land. How easily they forgot the slavery and brutality, the mistreatment by their masters, their complete lack of freedom, and the way their children were taken from home and even killed.

They missed the onions.

Evangelist Vance Havner had a good word about these food cravings in the wilderness.  Havner said, “Cucumbers are 12 inches of indigestion, melons are 95 percent water, and the garlic and onions–well, they speak for themselves.”

Nostalgia blurs the memories of the bad and leaves the few pleasures of the past intact. Which isn’t completely bad, once you stop to think about it. The ability to blot out horrible memories allows us to rise to our feet after a shattering experience and go on with life.

Question:  How did the Lord feel about Israel’s nostalgia for those few culinary delights of Egypt? And the anger of the Lord was greatly aroused; Moses also was displeased. (Num. 11:10)

Friend, you do not want to arouse God’s anger, believe me.

In fact, Moses says the people are actually despising the Lord by their nostalgia. So, it was far from harmless.

B. In Matthew 23, the Pharisees remembered the past wrongly.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were nostalgia addicts. The Lord said, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ (Matthew 23:2-30)

The Pharisees had discovered it was safe to honor the righteous leaders of the past. It was only this pesky Jesus and His disciples who were the trouble-makers. They honored the past leaders but despised the present ones.  If they saw the hypocrisy in such contradictory behavior, there’s no indication.

In fact, they were following a long-established custom…

–The church in the wilderness honored Abraham and persecuted Moses.

–The church under the kings honored Moses and persecuted the prophets.

–The New Testament church honored the prophets and persecuted Jesus.

–The church in the middle centuries honored Jesus and persecuted Hus and Wycliffe and others.

One wonders whom we are persecuting today in the name of the Lord while honoring the martyred heroes of the past.

To the leaders who were romanticizing Israel’s past, Jesus said, You are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt (Matt. 23:31-32).

Like fathers, like sons.

He said, Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city….(Matt. 23:34).

The children were living down to the example of their ancestors.

Nostalgia may be a fun place to visit, but you don’t want to live there.

The man who becomes obsessed with an earlier age might make a great history professor in college, but you would not want to be married to him.

The woman whose beclouded mind lives in another world makes a terrible wife and negligent mother.

Christians who long for the hallowed days of the 1950s are miserable disciples of the Lord Jesus today and troublesome church members for every pastor.

Millions of Americans long for past times when life was great, everyone went to church, citizens were all patriotic, and neighborhoods were peaceful.

That time in American life did not exist. Except in their minds.

Oh yes, in the 1950s we could read the Bible in school and often had prayer over the intercom at the start of the day.  And my high school principal actually allowed students to cut class for an hour to attend the morning revival services at the Baptist church across the street.  But honestly, we were all bored by the prayers and the scripture-reading.

When prayer was outlawed in schools, those of us who had experienced it did not feel we were losing anything of value. Sorry if this disappoints anyone.

The Remedy for Nostalgia’s Dangers is God’s Remedy for All That Ails Mankind.

Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

The Lord Jesus was back there in the past. He is right here in the present. He will be on site when tomorrow’s sun comes up.

The Bible says of David that he served his generation and then fell asleep (Acts 13:36). That’s the plan.

Serve your generation. Do your job today. Do not bury yourself in another age, no matter how special it was. You are alive today and today is your responsibility.

Even though movies (Back to the Future is a great example) and novels envision us time-traveling into the distant past to “fix” something broken and then returning to find the present an entirely more pleasant age, that does not happen.

The way to fix the future is to be faithful, now, on the job, today. To change the future, love a child today.  Teach a child today.  Lead a family to Christ today. Support a missionary in a foreign country today. Give an offering to an evangelist today.  Pray for those on the cutting edge of the gospel today.

Nostalgia has a place, I suppose.  Those who need a break from life’s stresses and pressures may find the past a great place to visit.

Watch an old movie or read a book. But, then, come back to the present and do your job.  Be present today.

We’ll be needing you here.