There is a difference between documenting the past and "living in" the past.
A Historian documents the past so we know where we came from and how we got to the position we are presently in. This has been an honorable profession since the ancient Greeks and Roman writers first started the concept two thousand years ago. The practice has undergone some revisions in that time and because of historians we now have a better understanding of truth itself. For in the words everyone knows, "Those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it." For us to truly know who we are, where we are, and how we got here, we have to reference past events. The Bible itself is an attempt to document the past to give credence to present claims. Unfortunately, we have found that the Bible is self-contradictory and not a reliable guide to the truth of past events, but is instead a poetic record of the aspirations of men in history.
"Living in the past" is an imprecise description given to people who seem to not be aware of their surroundings or how customs and manners have changed in society.
These two practices apply to fundamentally different spheres of life. One is a description of a social function and the other of a psychological need.
When confronting evidence of history that we prefer to not remember, it is tempting to accuse the historian of being irrelevant by "living in the past," but if the documents he provides contain no errors of truth, they become valuable benchmarks against which we can all measure our present progress.
copyright (c) 2016
William Schaeffer
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