Do What the Dead Guys Did

“Read the dead guys!” is a maxim often heard whenever a hero of ours in modern times fails. There is much wisdom to glean from this as the lives of the dead guys are in the history, and because of this they may be judged as a complete picture. Concurrent heroes are difficult to look up to as their and consequences of their actions are incomplete. They are only trustworthy to a point.

Don’t just read the dead guys, emulate them! What is the point of picking up a biography if there’s not even a little bit of it that rubs off or you are not warned to the depths of your soul? There are oceans of books out there that people are reading, but puddles of men who live like those they read about.

If you pick up a biography of Jonathan Edwards and are enflamed in the study of Scripture, then history has become profitable to you. If you read about John Knox praying so much by his bedside that there were knee-shaped divots in his cobblestone floor, and you are drawn more to prayer, then history has done its duty.

How do you create a future that has not forgotten its past? By doing what those in the past did. Don’t just read books, live!