Living Beyond Offense: 7 Days Exploring Forgivenessნიმუში

Forgiveness Is Not Forgetting

A common barrier to forgiveness is failing to understand what forgiveness is not. Cultural mantras like “forgive and forget” can lead us to think that the work of forgiveness is the work of forgetting. In my personal life, “forgive and forget” was not just a mantra I picked up from the culture. It was also a creed I learned in church. Growing up Black and Christian, I had grown accustomed to the end of a sermon, regardless of its text, ascending to a victorious retelling of Jesus’s blood shed at Calvary. Every now and then, the preacher might add to their jubilant recounting of Christ’s death on the cross: “God has thrown all of our sins into the sea of forgetfulness.” Though I’d heard this refrain said several times by various preachers in different denominations, I had no idea where these words were in my Bible. Though I found the idea of God throwing my sins into the sea of forgetfulness immensely beautiful, it distracted my worship and sent my intellectual wheels turning.

• How can an all-knowing God forget?
• If forgetting is what it means to forgive, what happens if I can’t forget?

Forgetting can be a dead end for anyone truly trying to forgive. Here are three reasons why:

1. Forgetting is not always possible.

Some memories will never fade. They are so embedded into our storyline that even when we aren’t thinking about the offense or trauma we’ve experienced, we’re still living in response to it.

2. Forgetting the past is not always in touch with the reality of the present.

If the person who has offended you doesn’t turn over a new leaf, you will struggle to forget the past. Their repeated offenses make forgiving-as-forgetting a non-option.

3. Forgetting can be shalom-avoidant.

The shalom-avoidant person stuffs, hides, and sweeps grievances under the rug in the name of peacekeeping. Because they hate conflict, they can cling to the forgive-and-forget mantra to escape having a hard, yet necessary, conversation.

Trade Forgetting For Faithfully Casting

If forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting, then what do we do with the preacher’s words: “God has thrown all of our sins into the sea of forgetfulness.” As followers of Jesus Christ, aren’t we expected to follow His model for forgiveness? Well, yes, but the preacher’s words are a mis-quote. Micah 7:19 reads, “[God] will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea,” not “God will cast all our sins into the sea of forgetfulness” (ESV). No translation is written this way. However, I do understand how the preachers in my home church reached this interpretation. In Jeremiah 31:34 God tells Israel that despite their egregious record of abominations against Him, He will “forgive their iniquity” and “remember their sin no more” (ESV).

Thankfully, when the Bible speaks of God forgetting or remembering, it doesn’t imply there is ever a time when His knowing has fallen short of all-knowing. Instead, the Bible is using anthropomorphic language, ascribing finite human characteristics to an infinite God, to help us get a sense of what God and His activity in the world are like. Though He cannot forget, God will relate to us as if He did. He will not dangle offenses over your head or throw the past in your face. “As far as the east is from the west,” so far will He “remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12 ESV). He doesn’t forget; He casts.

As believers, this is the model of forgiveness we are called to follow. When we forgive, we make the one-time merciful decision to release our offender of their debt and not retaliate against them. With God’s help, we daily pick up our cross and follow Jesus down the road of forgiveness.