Forgiving Doesn’t Mean Forgetting

And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the LORD your God. You had made yourselves a golden calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD had commanded you. Deuteronomy 9:16

In my addiction, I caused my wife tremendous misery and pain. It took some time, but she eventually forgave me, though she’d be the first to tell you that she’s not forgotten. In fact, I’ve often heard her say – Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. She’s let go of the debt I owed her, no longer holding it over my head. That doesn’t mean however, that she’s dismissed the events of the past as if they never happened. She’s learned and is now sensitive to the warning signs. If I would skip my weekly recovery meeting, she would be properly concerned. If I’d quit getting up early to read, pray, and write, alarm bells would go off in her head. Yes, she’s forgiven me, but that doesn’t mean that the events of the past have been removed from her memory.

The same goes for me. I’ve asked for, and have received, forgiveness from God and my wife. That, however, doesn’t erase my past. I’m not meant to wallow in the memory of my failures, but if I simply dismiss them and the lessons I learned, then I’m bound to repeat them. Part of recovery is remembering the destruction I caused. Maturity means that now, when tempted by self-destructive behavior, I’m able to remember where that once led me. Because I consider the past, I’m now capable of thinking things through, weighing the inevitable consequences instead of acting impulsively.

In today’s passage, Moses implored his people to remember the failures of their past. Though it happened decades prior, Moses reminded the Israelites of the golden calf incident. They had repented of their idol worship and they had been forgiven by God, but God hadn’t forgotten and neither should they. If they desired to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, they needed to remember them.

The same is true for us. When we’ve been in the wrong, we like to believe that forgiveness means forgetting. You said you’ve forgiven me. Why don’t you trust me? Can’t we pretend that it never happened? Forgiving though, doesn’t mean forgetting. The past happened and we’d be fools not to learn the lessons of it. If we desire to avoid repeating the same mistakes, then we must remind ourselves of our failures and we must learn to think things through. Dismissing the past doesn’t make us more forgiving or Christ-like. It just makes us fools.