Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)
If you google the term “improving memory,” you get 129,000 or so results. If you search for “improving forgetfulness,” you’ll see 41 pages, none of which actually offer any techniques for getting better at forgetting. One conclusion we may draw from this is that we place value on being able to remember the details of our lives, and that the ability to forget is not something we should seek to enhance.
Anyone who has desperately searched high and low for misplaced car keys wouldn’t disagree, and I would never attempt to argue that forgetfulness is more useful in everyday life than the ability to remember important details. But it took a sermon from a semi-retired preacher in a small Baptist church this morning to give me a different perspective: God’s grace is often poured out on us via the ability to forget.
To a large extent, what we are today is defined by what we remember about yesterday, or the collective yesterdays that comprise our lives. The emotions triggered by those memories are just as important as the intellectual lessons we assimilate from them. Most of us have memories that we classify as “good” and “bad” and the extent to which the “good” ones outweigh the “bad” ones, the more likely we are to find life more pleasant…less stressful…more fulfilling. But what happens when the bad memories outweigh the good ones? Can we tilt that scale back the other way?
The apostle Paul seems to think so. In the verse quoted above, from his letter to the church at Philippi, he seems to have made a conscious decision to forget what’s happened in his life up until now…and he had a lot of bad things to forget, not only regretful actions he took, but things that were done to him. Yet he put them behind him — forgot them…made them irrelevant to his attitude and outlook — and focused on what lay ahead.
How did he manage to do that? After all, letting go of past hurts and shames is possibly the most difficult thing humans can do. No matter how often we speak of “forgiving and forgetting,” we are usually much more successful at doing the former than the latter. In fact, I’m not sure it’s possible to forget those things that drag us backwards, in and of ourselves. I believe that it’s only through the grace of God that we can truly forget, and in forgetting, move ahead to the things He has in store for us.
Now, I can’t prove this premise with a specific Scriptural citation, but there are plenty of references to God’s power and desire to strengthen us in our areas of weakness if we’ll simply ask Him. So, if memories of wrongs done to you or of your own failures are keeping you from having joy in your everyday life, try asking God to give you the gift of forgetfulness. Somewhere along the line, He’ll require you to forgive the others, and perhaps even forgive yourself, but the God who desires all good things for His children and whose purposes are redemptive will be faithful to grant you that gift.
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So, if memories of wrongs done to you or of your own failures are keeping you from having joy in your everyday life, try asking God to give you the gift of forgetfulness. Somewhere along the line, He’ll require you to forgive the others, and perhaps even forgive yourself, but the God who desires all good things for His children and whose purposes are redemptive will be faithful to grant you that gift.
Interesting that I’ve been reading recently about all the problems the search engine world we live in is causing with people having the ability to “forget” past failures. Used to be, time and space could separate a person from their youthful indiscretions. Today’s generation is growing up with no such luxury. I can only think this will make it harder than ever for people to forgive themselves.
Bryan, that is an interesting technological twist on the issue, but I view it as simply one more tool the accuser will use to try to keep us enslaved to our guilt. And I think the Bible does have something specific to say about that, along the lines of “no weapon formed against us shall prosper…” That goes for the Wayback Machine, too! 😉
Granted, you’ve addressed this from a spiritual perspective in terms of personally forgetting past unhappiness and weakness. Outside of Divine assistance, it is as you’ve said, an impossibility. Personally, I would never want to forget anything that’s happened to me. Hardship is like blacksmith’s forge. Survive the tempering process makes one stronger.
But that’s just me. I’d rather not contemplate what sort of personal horrors you might’ve been implicitly referring to, Eric.
Bryan’s raised a very interesting point though, albeit on a purey temporal form of forgetting. I’m not at all surprised the press is unhappy the search engine world is preventing people from “forgetting” past failures.
What they mean is the search engine world is preventing the MSM from doing their absolute best to make sure people “forget”.
Even in spite of the net and search engines, the MSM remains very adroit at “forgetting”.
…providing that person is a liberal politician or a leader in a liberal cause. If they are, everything they do is “forgotten” even as it happens. The phrase, “it’s time to move on” was used so often during The Clinton Years, it’s been co-opted as the name of a major leftist political group.
The net has changed all. Suddenly, a person with a wi-fi laptop and Google can help others “remember” things the MSM has helped them “forget”.
In that respect, the internet and search engines are the best things that have ever happened to our culture.
Oh, that’s just silly, Mr. Freen.
OK…let’s nip this in the bud right now.
Please think carefully about what I wrote in my post and the category in which it resides before making any more off-topic comments. I’m not going to mandate the direction of discussions here, but there’s a point at which they become less than edifying, especially in relation to the original post.
I think you’re right – you’ll certainly need help if you want to forget something. The harder you try to do it yourself, the more deeply you’ll imbed that memory.
I wonder if, in this sense, “forgetting what is behind” means “letting go of it,” rather than truly “not remembering it.” In that way, whatever benefit you got out of the thing you want to forget is retained, but the power the thing may have over you is diminished.
The sermon at our place yesterday was about anger, and the bottom-line message was, “get over it.” I’m seeing parallels, here.
Brian, I think you’re right on the money about the “letting go of it” angle. “Forgetting” is almost impossible in the physical/psychological sense, but what is possible, with God’s grace, is the ability (and the desire — let’s not forget that important aspect of it) to throw off the chains of those past actions that often seem to convince us that we’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes, or that keep past wrongs fresh in our minds and blind us to the better things we could be pursuing.
Getting over unrighteous anger is, to a large extent, tied to being able to forget (in the sense we’re discussing) the event(s) that gave rise to it.
Eric, you’re absolutely right, and I apologize. One thing that bothered me (and it was secondary), was that a thoughtful discussion that you and Brian began got redirected into ‘let’s slap the media around some more’ … and that was a shame.
But another thing (and THIS was primary) was my own, personal shortcomings in tolerating some forms of criticism … if you’ve ever been irritated by the silly comments made concerninmg the oil industry, by people who don’t have a clue about that industry, then you’ll know how I feel about some comments drirected towards my profession … I hope you will understand, and forgive.
I will try to remember your admonition, and the gist of your original post … Lord knows, I need to.
Jeff, no apology needed, amigo. You correctly note that I was simply hoping to keep the discussion on a different plane.
Although when I stop to think about it, much of this seems to prove the point of the original post, so perhaps it was edifying in its own way. 😉
Out of deference to my host, I’m not going to tear you a new backside, Jeff.
But for that reason, and no other.
For clarification – My original point in raising the Google question was in no way directed at the MSM. These are more philosophical questions we face as a society in which “forgetting” is becoming much more difficult to do thanks to the technological ability to find dirt on people. It’s not something I think about in terms of Liberal or Conservative, but in terms of being Human.
Used to be, privacy was something that we had by virtue of time and space. Time would pass, and personal missteps would be buried far away or in a musty file cabinet somewhere. Now, that illusion of privacy is disappearing.
People spend a lot of their lives outgrowing their mistakes. They mature and change. And Google now can come along and pull the scab off those efforts. Sure, it’s a tool of the enemy. That doesn’t make it less painful to bear, even with divine assistance.
As for the statement that “no weapon formed against us will prosper,” that’s a long term outlook, sure. But the saints suffer a lot of slings and arrows while those weapons are prospering in the short term. 🙂
The grace of forgetfulness
Starting from Philippians 3:13-14, Eric Siegmund writes, “God’s grace is often poured out on us via the ability to forget.” For me, wince-inducing memories of failures and embarrassments are more vivid than memories of successes and triumphs, so this i…