The Danger of Going Back

The word “again,” in Webster’s dictionary, means “Once more, or to a previous place or position,” as in “let’s do it again.” The Danger of Going Back is often overlooked in this definition.

There has arisen in our present time a notion based on a false nostalgic narrative that going back, the Danger of Going Back, is better than going forward. 

The word “again” is prominently used in reference to going back instead of going forward. This going back, as in “again,” is framed in glowing, sentimental, and almost wistful selective imagery. It is as if life were so much better before Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, or as if life were like peaches and cream before the school lunch program, or social security, or Medicare and Medicaid. The Danger of Going Back is a sentiment we must critically examine. 

The desire to go back or do what this country did before again is like the Shangri-La of the movie “Lost Horizon.” In other words, it is a myth.

Indigenous people being forced to march across the country, given blankets containing smallpox, and corralled on reservations was not euphoric.    

African descended people being forced to work on plantations, having their children ripped from their mothers’ arms and sold as property, was not the good old days.

Grown Black men and women being routinely referred to as “boy and girl” was not great. Black men and women being denied loans for housing or cars, and Black neighborhoods being redlined by banks, was not paradise. 

This fictitious and fraudulent feeling that going back is better than going forward is based on fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of being on equal terms with others and not measuring up, and fear of accepting the truth of one’s own past and present pathologies. Such was the case in the Old Testament book of Numbers in the fourteenth chapter. It is there we find the newly liberated Hebrews from Egyptian captivity on the precipice of a new day and the birthing of a new reality of freedom, equity, and self-determination in a new land, but the people poised on that precipice are paralyzed by fear and persuade themselves that it would be better to go back to Egypt.

The people of faith are told by God that before them lies a land flowing with milk and honey, and the land is promised to them by God, but the people imprison themselves in fear.

They say to Moses, “It would have been better if we died in Egypt or in the desert than to go forward.” The problem is that when Moses sent 12 spies to survey what was promised, ten of those spies came back fearful. Although the land is luscious, there are people “who look like giants,” and the ten spies say we cannot compete in this new land. The people hearing this are shaken to their core and decide it would be better to go back than to continue to go forward. There is a devastating danger in going back. Part of that danger is that people tend to remember previous experiences in a distorted way, rather than accurately. Stepping into a new reality can be very stressful for people, and their minds lose grip on reality to the point that the known dysfunction becomes more attractive than unknown possibilities. The people in the text complained about Moses and Aaron and said, “Let us elect/choose a leader to take us back to Egypt,” back to the myth of their misguided minds. Egypt was where they were overburdened and oppressed. Egypt was where they were subjugated and sorrowful. Egypt was where the wealthy wielded unchecked power over their lives. The people were determined to elect a leader who would embrace the myth and marshal them back to experience the horrible hardships again. Those in the Judeo/Christian faith know this story and you know how things turned out. This story of a delusional and disoriented people has important insights that not only spoke to those then but to us now. First of all, fear is never a good emotion for making life-altering decisions. It does not matter what the fear is about, whether it is circumstances, problems, or people, fear is not a good emotion for making critical decisions in pressing times.

The second fear will convince you to choose people to lead you whose talk only heightens your fears, and most importantly, who really only care for themselves and not you, but who take the opportunity to profit off your fear.

Finally, this narrative shows us that fear, false narratives and the desire to go back ignore the promise of God in going forward. As Langston Hughes wrote in his famous poem “America never was America to me…[but] America can be.” If we seek to move forward and not backwards.

Be authentic, Be aware and Stay Woke! Uhuru Sassa!!!        

The Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. in Gary. “We are not just another church but we are a culturally conscious, Christ-centered church, committed to the community; we are unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.” Contact the church by email at [email protected] or by phone at 219-944-0500.