To Remember or to Forget?

What do we do with the past… with the sorrows and with the joys, with the blessings and with the pains, with the brokenness and with the redemption?

This idea has been rolling around in my head all week. And it matters: How I handle the past shapes how I experience the present and how I view the future.

Is the past something to be held onto and cherished, or something to be swept away and forgotten?

As in so many other areas of life, I believe the Biblical answer is a balance between the two extremes.

All one has to do is read the book of Deuteronomy to see the importance of remembrance! A quick online concordance search for “remember Egypt” brought up 10 verses in that one book. Again and again, Moses tells the people to remember…even though the oldest people he spoke to then had been only youths during the Exodus (Numbers 32:11).

But what exactly does Moses tell them to remember? And this is important.

Five times, the command is to remember that the people had been slaves (5:15, 15:15, 16:12, 24:18, 24:22). That would not have been a fun memory to hold onto…it was a memory full of suffering, oppression and possibly shame as well. Something that the religious leaders in Jesus’ day had possibly repressed or forgotten or probably were simply ignoring (John 8:33).

That wasn’t the only thing Moses commanded the people to remember though! Also five times, the admonition is to remember God’s salvation (5:15, 7:18, 15:15, 16:3, 24:18). Because the enslavement of a nation was not the end of the story. God remembered His covenant with His people, and performed mighty works, miraculously redeeming His children out of that bondage – and what was well worth remembering and celebrating!!

Another two times, the command is to remember past sin—both the people’s general rebelliousness (9:7) and Miriam’s specific consequence (24:9). These memories would also not be pleasant to hang on to, but they remained important as a warning against future disobedience…a warning few generations in Israel’s history successfully heeded. This brings to mind the common saying along the lines of ‘those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.’

Fast forward to the time of the early Church. On Passover, a festival specifically for the purpose of remembering the past, Jesus gave a similar command to His disciples when instituting the Lord’s Supper: “Do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19).

But there is also a place for forgetting, or at least choosing not to remember. God makes that promise to His people, in Jeremiah 31:34 (and referred to in Hebrews 8:12): “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Paul also uses himself as an example of intentionally forgetting, in a verse a close friend reminded me of this past weekend: “Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13-14).

So that is the tension we are called to live in—forgetting past things which distract us from our heavenly goal, but always remembering how God has moved and worked in our lives.

In this season of my life, I’m trying to learn/practice maintaining that balance. Grieving and repenting of past hardships/sins…not stuffing the feelings of sadness or guilt down into a festering wound. But even more intentionally letting go of the past that I cannot go back and change, remembering all the good things God has worked and is working in my life—remembering His manifold blessings.

This is a journey and a tension I believe many, if not all, people are experiencing to some degree. So let us pray for one another, for God’s continued healing and restoration. For His joy and love to be what flows through us to others!