HISTORY’S COMPASS

I have always loved history. It tells a story that isn’t biased. But then, as the world keeps moving at the pace it’s moving at, most of our historic events have been perverted and misinterpreted rendering its purpose meaningless. People over time have grown fond of forgetting the importance of history and concerning themselves more with making the story more interesting even if it means to pervert it.

History speaks of times when we didn’t live in. It tells us of how things came about. It gives us an insight of how things were. It tells a story. A true story. So, history in itself it’s unbiased. But the interpretations and perceptions towards it can be biased and misleading. Someone once said, 10 people can’t tell the same story the same way. They might all have a common ground but they will tell the story in a way that they understood it from.

Most times, we think some historical events and stories might not be true but it is probably because more people have interpreted it and that has only gave rise to more perversions from the original story. And this is why, as much as it is possible with us, when we have access to the original story, we should make good references to it rather than trying to play smart because it is very easy to change the meaning of things that aren’t your story to begin with.

I don’t have any history that I think is wrongly believed except that of the history of Christianity and the beginning of the church in most countries, if not the world. In most countries, particularly in Nigeria, it is believed that the Roman Catholic Church was the first church in history. But that’s not true. The first church in history started over 2000 years ago, on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem according to the Holy Bible. But over the years, the church has faced persecution that has made it spread from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to different parts of the world.

And as it’s true that the church started long ago, we can see that today, we have so many Christian sect and divers beliefs of what Christianity is. Now, we hear things like, “oh! That’s your church’s doctrine” but the question remains, “Is Christ divided?” I’m not surprised though because the Holy Bible which is the bedrock of the Christain faith has said there will be perversions. These days, Christianity is seen as a joke because we don’t speak and practice the same thing. And that’s because we keep deviating from the word of God and relying on our own wisdom and what we see around us.

We choose to stick to what our church teachers tell us without searching the Bible for ourselves. And over the years, we just let anything go once it comes to Christianity. We do it as it pleases us and when it is convenient for us. We don’t care about whether or not if the history of Christianity we know of is true. We just accept it choosing to believe that as long as we all call on the name of God, we are all doing his will but that is a very wrong way to think of it.

History is very important. It acts as a compass to guide us. It gives the facts. But when we neglect it, we only get lost. So one way I believe we can correct this perception, is to go back to the Bible and make our own research about whether or not the history we know and have accepted is in line with what the Bible has said, especially as people that believe they are Christians. It is only then, we can easily free ourselves from this misinterpretations and perverted history. The bitter truth is, the Christianity that is practiced outside the Bible is not Christianity and that’s because Christianity is not our invention. It only exists because of Jesus Christ so it’s only right we do it the way he wants.

Thank you for reading through. 💜