“Defend the past. Save the future.”

Those words are lighting up TV screens this week, promoting the new NBC time-travel adventure series Timeless. But really, it’s ridiculous. No matter how many people want to go back and “kill Hitler,” the past cannot be changed. Right? Right?

I don’t know. Last night, director Ava DuVernay took me back to familiar figures from my childhood. She didn’t “defend the past.” She revealed politicians I remember as heroes to be complicit in things I find difficult to accept. And if you take that journey with me, we might yet become a church that helps “save the future” by refusing to defend our past.

Here’s how this happened: I sat down for 90 minutes of Netflix, I wrote this, and Christianity Today published it. I’m grateful… for Ava DuVernay, for CT, and for anyone who accepts the challenge and watches this amazing piece of work.

Read the whole thing.