My daughter Katie is 24 now with children of her own, but I well remember when she was only 8 or 9-years-old her asking me: “Dad! Did they have colour television during the First World War?” It may sound like a silly question but I was impressed by how profoundly intelligent it was. Think about it: Katie was born in March 1985; the First World War was fought between August 1914 and November 1918. How could she know if she didn’t ask? Yes, she could have read up on it for herself, but she was used to her dad knowing the answers to difficult questions so she turned to me first. For a child that age it was a brilliantly observed query, because she wasn’t there during WWI, nor when colour television first arrived in Britain and, although I missed the first by several decades, I was there when the second occurred.

When I was born in 1958, Britain had two television channels, BBC Television and ITV (Independent Television) transmitting black and white pictures in 405-lines on VHF (Very High Frequency). Not until 1964 did we get a third channel. That’s when BBC Television diverged to become BBC1 and BBC2. However, the new BBC2 channel was not universally available at first but required viewers to buy a new set and a special TV aerial because, although still in monochrome, BBC2 transmitted in 625-lines on UHF (Ultra High Frequency) in preparation for the introduction of colour television a few years later. Colour TV finally arrived in Britain in 1967, but was initially restricted to the London area and didn’t cover most of Britain until 1969. It was an exciting time, but to someone born in 1985, simply history. Katie had never known a television network broadcasting exclusively in black and white on only two channels, so without more historical knowledge her ignorance was hardly surprising, but an example of something called anachronism, from the Greek ana (backwards) and chronos (time).

Anachronisms come in all shapes and sizes, like those amusing on-screen mistakes tha crop up occasionally historical dramas, such as a Roman centurion wearing a wristwatch or wedding ring, or a television aerial intruding into the view of a Victorian skyline, as Sherlock Holmes pursues some miscreant through London’s back streets. We’ve all seen the sort of thing, where some historical incongruity slips through despite the most meticulous scrutiny of the best director, location crew or editor. What is harder to avoid, however, is not the glaring blooper of the Roman wristwatch or the knights in Nikes, but the anachronistic depiction of attitudes or language that simply do not reflect how people spoke, thought or behaved in the period portrayed. This disturbs me, because when we superimpose 21^st century morals and mores on people of the past we do a serious disservice to history by distorting their reality to meet our expectation.

An example of this occurred recently when it came to light that producers were planning a £66-million remake of the ‘The Dam Busters’. You’ve probably seen it: a 1955 black and white British war movie about the squadron that blew up several important German dams in 1943 using Barnes Wallis’s ‘bouncing bomb’. It was consummate feat of derring-do that cost the RAF dear in men and aircraft led by a charismatic young Wing Commander called Guy Gibson, originally played by the actor and real-life D-Day veteran Richard Todd, now 90. The point was that Gibson had a faithful black Labrador dog called Nigger, whose name the producers of the new film wanted to change as politically incorrect for today’s audience. I’m sorry but I profoundly disagree, and anyone with an ounce of historical appreciation knows that what an RAF officer affectionately called his beloved dog in 1943 was not calculated to be a racial slur seventy years later. Had the story been fiction, the revision could be justified, but these were real people and the Wing Commander’s pet was a real dog. This proposal was simply pandering to worst sort of philistinistic offence-avoidance and gesture politics, and a clear example of the application of anachronistic morality. The people depicted didn’t think the way we do and we shouldn’t pretend that they did. But even if Gibson had been a raving racist, it would be equally wrong to sweep that under the carpet.

Rewriting history we don’t like is a very dangerous practice as George Orwell demonstrated in his dystopian Socialist vision, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. The title was simply an anagram of ‘1948’ – the year it was written, and the Britain of his dark novel was modelled on Stalin’s Soviet Union, which should tell us something about where political correctness is taking us to today. But for sheer anachronistic effrontery the Christian Church takes some beating, with its often dodgy depiction of the Bible and the peoples who populate its pages, on whom successive generation have superimposed their own anachronistic values based on their own thorough misappreciation of ancient Middle Eastern culture. And nowhere is this more evident than when Christians look askance at the behaviour of their Biblical forebears and say: ‘Oh, I would never have behaved like that.’ In many cases I suggest we might think again, because as Sir Isaac Newton famously observed: ‘If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants’, and I think that too many Christians forget that in our Bible we are privileged to look on the actions others through the prism of two to six thousand years of hindsight.

Imagine if you had been there when the twelve spies returned to Moses (Numbers 14) when ten of them reported that Canaan was full of giants that made the land unconquerable. Only Joshua and Caleb expressed a contrary opinion, insisting that with God on their side success was inevitable. Which side do you suppose you would have taken?

‘Oh, I’d have been right behind Joshua and Caleb!’  - Hmm, sure you would.

Or how about Elijah’s challenge to the people on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18:21, when confronting 450 priests of Baal and another 400 of Asherah, he demanded:

"How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." And the people did not answer him a word.

‘Oh, I’d have been solidly in Elijah’s camp!’ Yeah, right!

Years ago I meditated on the famous parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector in Luke 18:9-14.

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:

"Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men: extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."

And I remember like yesterday thinking: ‘I’m glad I’m not like that Pharisee’, then immediately hearing the Lord laugh, and say: ‘You really didn’t get it, did you? That remark is exactly like the Pharisee’.

Ouch! It stung, but I got the point. The point about the Pharisee was not that he was a Pharisee. That was incidental because they were the audience Jesus was addressing. The point was that he self-righteous and judged himself and others according to his own moral standard. And I had done exactly the same by judging myself as less self-righteous than he was. - Hmmm!

Or, how about this for a real biggie? – What would you have done in Judas Iscariot’s shoes on the night of the Last Supper, or if you had been among the Jerusalem mob baying for the release of Barabbas? It’s comforting to believe we would acted differently, but then we know the end of the story.

I remember the reaction of many New Yorkers speaking on camera on 9-11. One man was understandably incensed and seething with vituperation at the perpetrators demanded that America go immediately to war…

But against whom?

Now put yourself in the shoes of a first century Jew under the Roman occupation. Jerusalem’s procurator Pontius Pilate was a cruel, anti-Semitic military dictator, responsible for countless thousands of Jewish deaths and sacrilegious acts against Yahweh. As polytheistic pagans the Romans actually considered monotheists as atheists and held their cult in utter derision; which contempt was wholly mutual. Roman culture was fascistic and foreign. Compassion was considered a weakness rather than a virtue, and we can see parallels with the Nazi occupation of much of Europe. How would you feel if your country was under the yoke of such an oppressor? You’d want rid of them, right? Well, that’s how the Jews felt about Rome. And many devoutly believed that their scriptures promised just such a liberator – the Messiah. He would deliver them from bondage, expel the Romans and re-establish God’s kingdom under the Davidic line. So, when one Sunday a young miracle-working Galilean Rabbi called Yeshua rode into town on a donkey colt (the entry of a triumphant King), the expectation in the hearts of every observant Jew was kindled to a frenzy out of which they cried in utter exultation: “Deliver Now! Deliver Now!” which, of course, in Hebrew is: “Hoshanna! Hoshanna!” At last, the Messiah, the Son of David was come! Ho, ho! Those Romans had better watch out. Now Pilate would pay! I can only imagine that Jesus’ reception at Jerusalem that day must have resembled General de Gaulle’s triumphal entry into Paris in 1945.

So, what happened next? Did Yeshua overthrow Pilate and bring fire down on the Roman garrison? Or did he embrace Caiaphas the High Priest and endorse the Sanhedrin? Nope! He strode into the Temple and whipped the moneychangers. Whoa, whoa! Hold on a minute. Run that by me again. This is God’s Messiah, Israel’s king of the line of David, come to re-establish God’s kingdom in Israel, and he leaves those godless pig-eating pagans secure in their palaces but lays into the custodians of the true religion and desecrates the Temple precincts. There must be some mistake.

You see, the people had been quite right. Jesus was indeed God’s Messiah and had come to deliver them from bandage, but not necessarily to meet their limited expectations. What they expected of a ‘Deliverer’ was not the same as God’s expectation. Or, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 3:20-21,

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

You see God’s scope is much wider than ours and his wisdom a whole lot greater. The Jews who welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem that Sunday had a very limited vision of God’s deliverance of his people, involving the rearrangement of some political and religious furniture, whereas God’s idea was to defeat Satan, forgive the world of sin and redeem all of mankind from the curse. They just couldn’t see that, and I venture to suggest, had we been there at the time, we would probably not have seen it either. So, now consider your position when a week later Pilate stood before the people and asked them to choose: ‘Who do you want released – the ‘Religious Nutter’ from Galilee or the ‘Freedom Fighter, Jesus Barabbas?‘

Suddenly, that fig leaf of hindsight looks ever so inviting.

And Judas? – Well, we know he was a Zealot, a member of a vehemently anti-Roman liberationist political movement. Maybe he just wanted to force Jesus’ hand, and pressure him into reacting against the Roman authorities. But whatever his motives, I think disappointment played a prominent part, just like the Jerusalem crowd. So get over it, and consider that without the benefit of hindsight, you and I would probably have been standing in the wrong crowd outside the Praetorium that day, yelling for the release of our ‘Deliverer’ the freedom fighter Barabbas and shouting ‘Crucify the Let Down from Galilee’.

Maybe then, we can personalise those merciful words of Jesus on the Cross recorded in Luke 23:34, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”