“Defend the past. Save the future.”
Those words are lighting up TV screens this week, promoting the new NBC time-travel adventure series Timeless. But really, it’s ridiculous. No matter how many people want to go back and “kill Hitler,” the past cannot be changed. Right? Right?
I don’t know. Last night, director Ava DuVernay took me back to familiar figures from my childhood. She didn’t “defend the past.” She revealed politicians I remember as heroes to be complicit in things I find difficult to accept. And if you take that journey with me, we might yet become a church that helps “save the future” by refusing to defend our past.
Here’s how this happened: I sat down for 90 minutes of Netflix, I wrote this, and Christianity Today published it. I’m grateful… for Ava DuVernay, for CT, and for anyone who accepts the challenge and watches this amazing piece of work.