PRUNING FROM THE PAST
Comparisons with the past are risky. Our tendency is to select what we wish to remember and conveniently forget the rest. “Christians in particular are prone to abbreviate the historical record, pruning from the past that which is messy,” explains Notre Dame historian Nathan Hatch. “By a subtle and unconscious process we pick out of the historical tapestry only those strands which reinforce our own points of view.” Or, as Jackie Gleason quipped, “The past remembers better than it lived.” Swenson, Margin, pg. 142
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