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Job's friend, Bildad the Shuhite, had it right (for once): "Ask the former generations and find out what their fathers learned, for we were born only yesterday and know nothing, and our days on earth are but a shadow. Will they not instruct you and tell you? Will they not bring forth words from their understanding?" (Job 8:8-10).

Whatever question is on your mind, someone smarter than you has already seen it clearer, thought about it longer, and expressed it better. Why reinvent the wheel? Also falling under this heading: There are no new heresies—only old ones in new clothes. And again, they've all been answered with more wisdom and erudition than we'll ever be able to muster.

Because the deeper our roots, the higher we grow. Believers are all part of a "Dead Christians Society." We have far more brothers and sisters in the faith who are no longer around than we do contemporary saints. Lets get to know them. And while we slog it out on earth as members of the Church Militant, the Church Triumphant is pulling for us from heaven.

What a shame to lose a sense of the communion of saints—the "cloud of witnesses" urging us to go on. The heroism, tears, toil, and triumphs of "Dead Christians" can inspire the living.

"Exhibit A" is surely the Martyrs. Blaise Pascal put it like this: "The example of the deaths of Christian martyrs move us, for they are our members, having a common bond with them, so that their devotion inspires us not only by their example, but because we should have the same [qualities]."

Because reading Christian History is a great way to meet fascinating people and hear dramatic, colorful stories. History is all about people. Memorable people. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, "There is properly no history, only biography." And Thomas Carlyle added, "Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading." Those Victorians had it right—and nothing sizzles like the stories of the saints!

Because reading Christian History helps root out prejudice and foster sympathy and humility. It's so easy to think "The Church 'R' Us." It ain't. Most Christian believers look—and have looked, in past centuries—very different than we do. They've had different questions, different assumptions, different "lifestyles," different approaches to the Christian life, different strategies for evangelism, teaching, preaching, sacramental life, social action. …

From the little we may have heard about some of those differences, we've probably already put some of our brothers and sisters in a box marked: "Weird." But in the words of historian Jacques Barzun, reading history "tempers absolute partisanship by showing how few monsters of error there have been." The more we read about other Christians, the more we get to walk in their shoes and gain respect for their approaches to the faith.

That's a good thing, because the church today is a body with a wide (and sometimes wild!) variety of members. Knowing more about the past, we gain insight into the practices and problems of other Christians in the present. We may become less critical of others—and even more aware of our own shortcomings and limited perspectives.

Because reading Christian History shows us how we got where we are today. Where did all those denominations come from? How did the distinctive beliefs and practices of my own church develop? What's the big deal over Calvinism and Arminianism?

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March (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47