We just got back off holiday yesterday. We ventured up to a bit of the country I have never been to before and explored the wilds of Northumberland. We stayed in Alnwick and, from there, dotted around the county a bit, popped over to Lindisfarne on a boat, ventured to the most northerly point in England and even took a day trip up to Edinburgh.

One of the places we visited was the Beamish Living Museum. It has a set of buses and trams running on a loop to take you round the site and several  villages/towns set at different points in history. There is a 1800s pit village and colliery, a Victorian town and a 1950s town as well as some 1940s and 1950s farms.

All the towns are manned by actors and people playing parts and each of the towns stands alone, giving you a slice of life in that period. You can buy sweets from the victorian sweet shop, cakes and baked goods from the 1950s bakery, you can even get a perm done in the 50s hairdresser if you’re so minded! Anyway, it was a great day out.

I have written a number of times on this blog concerning Ecclesiastes 7:10, ‘Don’t say, ‘Why were the former days better than these? ’ since it is not wise of you to ask this.’ See here for one such example; you can search around for others. As a general rule, I think particular older saints, need to be mindful that the former days were not all we often remember them to be and it certainly doesn’t profit much to continually hark back to them.

However, as you go around places like Beamish, whilst there are reminders that the old days were not necessarily better than these, you can’t help but recognise there were some aspects of the old days that perhaps were better. Ecclesiastes doesn’t seem to be saying nothing about the olden days was better than these, just that looking back with rose-tinted spectacles is a mug’s game because there is much about the former days that were definitely worse! That doesn’t preclude us recognising some things might have been a bit better some of the time.

Conservatism is often painted quite negatively. Not just political Conservatism, but any form of Conservatism be it philosophical, theological, or whatever. It is considered to be the anti-progressive, luddite tendency that insists all change is bad all of the time. It is a caricature that is, frankly, not altogether unwarranted. But at its best, Conservatism offers something a little more positive than all that. Rather than denying that progress can be good where we are indeed progressing, Conservatives simply want to acknowledge that there are some pretty good things worth preserving that we would be the worse for losing. Not all that presents as progressive leads to progress and not everything about the old ways is necessarily bad or stymies the good (or a better) life.

If the older saints need to be careful not to insist the former days were better than these, perhaps younger saints need to be careful not to assume progress means dispensing with everything from the past. As with most things, there are aspects of life that warrant conserving and things that probably want kicking into the long grass in favour of newer, optimal ways. Even progressives recognise this being as so many of them are quite big on conservation efforts; wildlife and the natural world are typically considered well worth conserving.

Everybody, in the end, thinks some things are worth conserving. Everybody similarly reckons there are matter of progress worth progressing. What we disagree over is exactly which of these things we want to keep and which we don’t, which will serve our good and which will not. The former days probably got some of it right; the former days didn’t get all of it right. Our days will be no different.