MERCY WITH A MEMORY

As thoughtful and humane as this phrase sounds, it will interest us to know that it is not biblical. It is not a teaching in the Bible that we should forgive and forget - what we find is FORGIVENESS. The only one that has that power to both forgive and not remember our mistakes is God. Growing up, we were always told in school and even at home that when someone offends us, we should forgive and forget what they have done and that both work hand in hand. And because of this, a lot of persons have given up on trying to forgive people because they know they can never forget so there is no need to forgive.

This phrase was probably said by a random person and because it sounded so biblical, a lot of person must even think it is written somewhere in the Bible. But it isn’t. The Bible’s teachings has always been centered on forgiveness no matter how much we are hurt by the same person. But then, it never said we should forget what they have done because these people are humans and they can be easily manipulated and do the things they don’t even wish to do. Hence, we were advised to be wise as a serpent but harmless as a dove. This tells us that, even as we have forgiven those who have offended us, it will be so unwise to forget what they have done because we might end up giving room for that same thing to happen and this time even worse when we would have been able to stop it.

Let’s take a look at the human body for example, some weeks ago we discussed about vaccines. The human body has fighters we call them white blood cells. They are of different types and they have different areas where they function but their goal is to fight off foreign bodies. So what they do is, when these foreigners overcome our body fighters, we fall sick and then we take medications to strengthen these fighters to be able to fight back and most of the time, they are victorious (they have forgiven) but one thing is, they always keep memory of that particular virus or bacteria and how they fought it (they don’t forget) so that next time, if the same thing was to happen they can easily know how to stop it.

I’m not sure how much justice that explanation has done for us to understand this concept better but I believe that this analogy can be valid because God is the one that has made the human body function the way it does and also the Bible never said we should forget the mistakes of others to validate our forgiveness towards them but it has commanded us to forgive their mistakes. Yes, we can forget sometimes and that is because the person doesn’t make such mistakes again. But as long as that mistake persists, it is almost impossible to forget and that is not a bad thing as long as we forgive them of the wrong they have done to us.

People will only remind us of what we have done to them because we keep wanting to try the same thing again and a working human brain won’t just throw things out the window. It saves data even better than some computers if not all. And that also was made by God. Forgiveness is a choice we have to make. It is not something that can just happen. But the advice here is that, even as we most times can’t forget the mistakes of others or their offenses, that shouldn’t stop us from showing kindness to them when we have the opportunity to because that is what proves we have truly forgiven them, not when we FORGET. Forgiving even when you know the wrong that has been done to you.

This is my response to the hivelearners topic on FORGIVE AND FORGET.

Thank you for reading through. ❤️