A little forgetfulness

Christian Century, Feb 4, 1998 by L. Gregory Jones

Many of us struggle with the burdens of memory. We often wrestle with the presence of horrifying memories whose power paralyzes us from envisioning a better future. We feel trapped by the past. In these cases, a little forgetfulness might help heal psyches and relationships--and even whole societies. This is suggested with particular poignancy in Amos Elon's 1993 essay "The Politics of Memory":

I have lived in Israel most of my

life and have come to the conclusion

that where there is so much

traumatic memory, so much pain, so

much memory innocently or deliberately

mobilized for political purposes,

a little forgetfulness might

finally be in order. This should not

be seen as a banal plea to "forgive

and forget." Forgiveness has nothing

to do with it. While remembrance

is often a form of

vengeance, it is also, paradoxically,

the basis of reconciliation. What is

needed, in my view, is a shift in

emphasis and proportion, and a new

equilibrium in Israeli political life

between memory and hope.

What would it mean for people to discover that "a little forgetfulness might finally be in order"? Is it true that forgiveness has "nothing to do with it"?

The dynamics of "so much traumatic memory" converge in our most difficult psychological, social and political dilemmas: in the Middle East, in Bosnia, in South Africa, in racial divisions in the U.S., and in broken and oppressive family relations.

We may have to come to terms with a single episode whose traumatic effects are imprinted in our memories: the murder or suicide of a child, a rape or other sexual assault, a devastating betrayal, a single bomb which destroyed one's home and surroundings.

Or we may struggle with the results of repeated abuse, violence or torture, the effects of which perdure in the soul long after the beatings or the emotional assaults or the violence stop. This is particularly painful when there are permanent marks or wounds left on the body, but no less painful--and perhaps more difficult to identify and treat--when the wounds are imprinted only on the soul.

Third, we may face horrors which have not only assaulted individual people in isolated acts, but which, in their cumulative effect, have so pervaded a culture, a people, that they are passed on from generation to generation. Perhaps nothing has directly happened to a particular person, but his memories are traumatic precisely because of the ways in which the legacies of prior atrocities haunt the present.

Finally, there are events that sear people's memories not because they have happened to us, or to others we love, or to "innocent" strangers, but because I or we have perpetrated them. An apt example of this is Albert Speer, the Nazi architect and minister of armaments who genuinely sought to repent for his complicity in the Nazi regime. He was unable ever to acknowledge the full force of what he did or admit that he had been aware of the Final Solution--perhaps because he feared that he would have been unable to do so and continue to live.

Living with any of these kinds of memories can cause us to fear our recollections of the past, to devote time and energy to keeping the past at bay.

Yet Christians are called to be a people of memory. Might it be that, in the working of God's Holy Spirit, the One who is conforming us to the crucified and risen Christ, we can find resources for healing traumatic memories? Despite Elon's comment, forgiveness may have something to do with it.

We proclaim that the risen Christ returns to those who crucified him with a judgment that does not condemn but instead offers new life. But that new life comes through forgiveness and the return of memory, not its erasure or its denial. Christ redeems the past; he does not undo it. The risen Christ bears the wounds of his crucifixion. As Easter people, we believe the past--whatever it is--can be home. That is why remembering is so central to celebrations of baptism and of the Eucharist and to practices of prayer.

In this life, we must be guided by the memory of sin as a shield against sin, by the memory of Christ's wounds that are in solidarity with all victims who have suffered and those who continue to suffer. We must remember their and our suffering, and we must allow that memory to be spoken out loud for all to hear. But we need to do so in the context of God's forgiveness which, slowly and painfully, heals the past. This can be fostered through liturgies of healing, of baptism, of baptismal renewal, of reconciliation.

What we learn to forget is the past as the occasion for continually festering wounds. As our wounds heal, then perhaps the memories will become less and less painful until they no longer are the source of desires for vengeance. Perhaps the Christian vision of a new Jerusalem, a new heaven and a new earth, can equip us to envision a time when our wounds--and all of the world's wounds--will have been fully healed. Miroslav Volf suggests that such a vision offers us "a divine gift of nonremembrance."

Scriptural references emphasize that God will "blot out your transgressions" and "will not remember your sin" (Isa. 43:25; Jer. 31:34), and the Book of Revelation refers to the "first things passing away" with the arrival of a new heaven and the new earth. These texts refer to a transformation in which we will learn to remember our histories, even in their ugliness, in a way that we need not remember them as sin because they have been fully healed.