Ask the Counselor: “Should I Try to Forget My Past?”
As a biblical counselor, people often ask me the important question, “Should I try to forget my past?”
I first respond with a one-word answer. “No.”
Then I respond with a blog-size answer using the words:
• Remember
• Reflect
• Repent/Receive/Renew
• Reinterpret
• Retell
• Resources
Remember
Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t forget the past. It’s impossible. More importantly, it’s ungodly.
Memory is our God-given capacity to store and recall what we have experienced and learned. Remembering is part of our design by creation—before the fall into sin. “Remember” is used 167 times in the Bible (NIV), thus reminding us of the importance of remembering.
Some people mistakenly interpret Philippians 3:13 to mean that we should try to forget our past. “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.” The Greek word for “forget” does not mean not to remember, but not to focus my attention on. More importantly, the biblical context is whether Paul would focus his attention on his works of the flesh, attempts at self-righteousness, and putting confidence in the flesh, versus focusing on Christ’s righteousness and the power of Christ’s resurrection.
Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians is a testimony to the biblical value of remembering. “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia” (2 Cor. 1:8a). Throughout the epistle, Paul recalls and rehearses a litany of past suffering.
Reflect
In a similar way, the Psalms are a biblical testimonial to the power and value of remembering face-to-face with God. I call it reflecting.
People typically ask about forgetting in the context of dealing with past suffering—being sinned against, or dealing with past sin—sinning against others. I believe that attempting to refuse to remember our past can actually be a symptom of sin.
Trying to suppress past memories of pain (either regarding our suffering or sin) can be a refusal to face and deal with life. It can be an attempt to deal with pain apart from God. We could compare such attempts to self-sufficient “coping mechanisms” such as drinking and drugs—where we try anything to numb our pain, emptiness, or guilt.
In my book, God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, I describe how the Psalmists, Job, Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul remember face-to-face with Christ through “candor and complaint/lament.” In biblical candor, we’re honest with ourselves regarding our past and present. In biblical complaint/lament, we’re honest with God regarding our past and present.
Rather than attempting to forget, we are to bring to mind past external events and our current internal thoughts and feelings and bring them to Christ. As I put it in the book, “No grieving, no healing. Know grieving, know healing.” Reflecting on our past is our admission to ourselves and God that we can’t handle our past on our own, that we desperately need Christ.
Repent, Receive Grace, Renew
When our memories of the past relate to our past sin, Christ’s soul-u-tion is to remember, repent, and receive grace. “Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first” (Rev. 2:5).
In Psalms 32 and 51, David models remembering, repenting, receiving grace, and renewing his life by God’s Spirit. Rather than trying the impossible and sinful mental activity of suppressing the memory of his sin, David recalls to mind his sin against God. He repents deeply not only of behavioral sin, but of heart motivational sin.
Having repented, David receives grace—he accepts God’s gracious forgiveness and prays for shalom—a conscience at peace with the God of peace. He then prays that the Spirit would renew a right spirit within him so that he could turn from his path of sin (put off) and return to the path of righteousness (put on).
Reinterpret
But what do we do with our emotional agony when we remember past suffering—being sinned against? God’s Word is clear. We never forget, we re-member.
Think about that word: re-member. To put our memories back together again, to shape our memories through God’s eternal grid.
In God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, I use the life of Joseph to portray how God wants us to remember and then reinterpret our past with spiritual eyes. There I call it “weaving.”
In Genesis 50:20 and 45:4-8, Joseph refuses to forget. He calls to mind his suffering past with these words. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
In the Hebrew, the word “intended” can be used in a physical sense for weaving together a tapestry, such as Joseph’s coat of many colors. It can be used in the metaphysical sense in a negative way for weaving together an evil scheme or plot, such as Joseph’s brothers did. Or, it can be used in a positive sense of God weaving together good out of evil.
How do we deal with our past suffering? We look at life with spiritual eyes by bringing to bear God’s eternal narrative, spiritual 20/20 vision, and larger story perspective. Weaving is re-membering—to create wholeness using God’s perspective to bring meaning to our suffering.
That’s how, like Joseph, we find hope when we’re hurting. That’s how, like Joseph, we grant forgiveness to those who have caused our suffering. In so doing we can say, “I grieve, but I don’t despair.”
Retell
Being human involves shaping our personal experiences into stories or narratives. That’s part of our God-given capacity of memory. We shape our sense of self and who we are in Christ from our retelling of our experiences.
As spiritual friends, it is when we listen carefully and compassionately to one another’s most important stories that we gain access to how our friends are attempting to make sense of themselves in the context of their past experiences. Our one-to-one relationships and our small group meetings should be places where we retell our stories.
In God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, I discuss how the retelling process moves us from “weaving” to “worshipping.” In worshipping we are committed to finding God even when we can’t find answers. We are committed to knowing God more than knowing relief from our past. We worship God by retelling our stories like Joseph did—in a way that honors and glorifies God and His role in redeeming our past (see Genesis 45:4-8).
There is no power in forgetting our past. God doesn’t want us to pretend. Of all people, as Christians we must be the most honest about our past. We must remember, reflect, repent/receive/renew, reinterpret, and retell.
Resources
Two biblical counseling resources that I think you will find helpful in dealing with your past are:
• God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting by Bob Kellemen.
• Putting Your Past in Its Place: Moving Forward in Freedom and Forgiveness by Steve Viars.
Join the Conversation
What is your biblical answer to the question, “Should I try to forget my past?”
Yes to all. Remembering, after the hard work, really should lead us to the cross, where we are able to worship. Whether we are forgiving, needing forgiveness or just realizing the impact of living in a fallen world and still longing for what is to come, we all live with the memory and to “go dead” is to no longer bear the image of our great God and it robs God the opportunity to work. So we worship by remembering. It is all over the Old and New Testament. Whether like Joseph all those years in prison waiting, David in the caves running awaiting his kingship, Hagar in the desert, Ruth in the field…or the woman across from us who was raped repeatedly as a child, or the wife now trying to decide what to do with a violent husband, or the husband trying to decide what to do with an unfaithful wife or… we have past and present memory! And God does not waste an ounce of our story! He redeems every bit of it. Every page and every letter He uses for His purposes and for His glory. That we would really embrace our own stories and know the honor of walking with others in the midst of theirs. The Psalmist invites the people in chapter 66 to look and “remember” what God has done for the people, “what awesome miracles he has done” but some were not good and pleasant. But they remembered what He allowed, what their story was and what God did in and through their lives. They remembered who He was in the midst of it. The Psalm ends with an invitation that is personal, “I will tell you what He did for me.” Should this not be our pursuit? Thank you for the strong reminder here. We cannot forget this.
Bob,
Great post, I stuck it in my Instapaper box and just finally got around to reading it.
I’m curious, do you think a misunderstanding of verses such as Jer. 31.34 where God says “I will remember their sins no more” may also be a contributing factor in people believing they should forget their past? I find people often believe this means that God forgets (passive) our past (esp. our sins), when in fact he says he “will remember [our] sins no more” (active). For God to “forget” in the sense of having no knowledge or memory of something would impune his omniscience. Rather, to “not remember” is to say that because of his love for us in Christ, he will choose to not “keep a record of wrongs” (1Cor 13.5), holding our sins against us, reminding us of them or throwing them in our faces when we stumble and fall. In this sense we are not to “forget” our past suffering or sin, but are to refrain from “remembering” them, dwelling on them, holding on to the guilt and shame of them because to do so is to reject (at least in the moment, not necessarily in general) the gospel of grace.