Meaning and History

A couple of weeks ago I had coffee with a retired professor of history at Vanderbilt University.  His office was situated atop the library tower, overlooking the central quad.  From here, he has a bird’s eye view of each student scurrying about campus with open minds and full backpacks.  I had read a few of his 23 published works and after several minutes of discussing history, he turned to me and said “every historian is simply a frustrated novelist, we all want to tell a story and we want our story to mean something.  The problem is that there doesn’t appear to be any meaning in the story as a whole.”

Here was another casualty of the Academy.  This sounded all too familiar.  As a Ph.D. student in Colonial American Studies, I faced this philosophy weekly.  Our professor constantly echoed the Greco-Roman worldview that history simply repeats itself.  But if true, then what is the point to all this madness?  Why are we even here and what is the meaning to life?  If the saga merely repeats itself, then there really is no significance to life.

History then is more than just facts and data points; it is the meaningful story of events and intentions that have happened, are happening and will happen in the future.  All of us are trying to make sense of the world in which we live.  Finding ourselves wrapped up in a grand novel provides the context for seeing our micro-stories in a new light.  If we know what the story itself is all about, we can figure out our place within the plot.

Therefore, the story of human existence is the revelation of a creator God and his creation.  It is about humanity made in His image having a part to play in the story, it is about rebellion reverberating throughout the cosmos, it is about this good creator intervening within the story he is currently writing to rescue humanity and all creation through His son Jesus, and finally continuing this good work by the indwelling of His spirit within the world to bring history towards her final goal which is at long last the renewal of all things. 

This, then, is the grand novel of human existence...