Does God Forget?

I want to forget some things. But does God forget? Does God choose not to remember and if so, how does this help me heal?

I once visited the ancient ruins of Olympia, Greece.

The tour guide told me that in the entrance to the athletic stadium there were once pillars and inscribed on them were the names of people who had cheated in their events.

Not only that, but alongside the athletes’ name was the name of the town they came from.

It was a simple message of shame and guilt for all the world to see. The athlete and the town now had a reputation.

What would it be like to have your crimes and sin etched in stone for all the world to see?

Who would be your friend when everything about you was exposed and known?

Maybe only someone who has experienced the same level of humiliation and exposure.

I forget

I would like to forget some events in my life. Things that people have done to me and also things I have done to others.

I seem to be able to forget my shopping list, where I put my keys, and what I had for dinner last week. But it’s harder, much harder, to forget what seems to have been etched into my heart.

Those etchings have seemingly formed and shaped my life from an early age.

The bumps and bruises have pushed me this way and that.

Talk to anyone at a deep level and before long, we discover how early life events have forged deep and long-lasting conclusions.

It takes time to rewire some of those early childhood conclusions. Over the top, generous, grace-filled time.

But all of those events, good and bad, must be stored up in some cosmically vast data bank somewhere. Matter doesn’t just simply disappear.

I wonder if God forgets any of it.

Does God forget?

I don’t believe God forgets anything.

That might frighten you because you’ve had experiences where people have dragged up past events to use as some sort of evidence against you. Instead, you would much rather those events to be forgotten and done away with.

But what if God recorded everything? The good, bad, joys, struggles, triumphs and the simply plain boring stuff of life.

All recorded without any judgment of right or wrong. It’s simply there as a recorded event.

Oh, yes, and it’s not just your stuff, it’s everyone else’s too!

You can see the entire story of everything – AND I MEAN EVERYTHING.

But we, in our humanness, have a bias towards the negative. We have a velcro tenacity to hold on to the bad and be teflon slippery to the good.

The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. [This] shades “implicit memory”–your underlying expectations, beliefs, action strategies, and mood–in an increasingly negative direction. Rick Hanson.

I would suggest that many of us, deep down, think God has a similar mindset bias. That God holds on to our list of sins and is ready to throw it all back in our faces, whilst negating any good.

This progresses on to the view of God that God is ‘checking a list to see who’s been naughty or nice cause Santa God is coming to town.’

Wipe the slate clean

One of the earliest writing tools we had as humans was slate.

In 18th- and 19th-century schools, slate was extensively used for blackboards and individual writing slates, for which slate or chalk pencils were used (wiki).

From this use of slate, we have the phrase ‘To wipe the slate clean’ which means to wipe away all the old stuff and to start anew.

In fact, here in New Zealand, we have the clean slate scheme as part of our legal system.

God has an even better scheme.

God says this.

I am He who wipes the slate clean and erases your wrongdoing. I will not call to mind your sins anymore. Isaiah 43:25

Other versions of the Bible put it differently.

“I—yes, I alone—will blot out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again.” Isaiah 43:25 

I, I am He     who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,     and I will not remember your sins.