"Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future"
About this Quote
The subtext is a pushback against a common moral pressure tactic: if you still remember, you must not have forgiven. Smedes flips that script. Remembering becomes compatible with moral progress, even necessary to it. He also shifts agency to the injured party. Forgiveness here isn’t an acquittal handed to the perpetrator; it’s a re-authoring of the past so it stops dictating the future. "Creates a new way to remember" is doing a lot of work: the event stays fixed, but its meaning is renegotiated. That’s psychologically astute and rhetorically effective, because it offers a third option between denial and bitterness.
Contextually, as a religious writer steeped in pastoral concerns, Smedes is speaking to communities where forgiveness is preached as duty. He makes it livable. The final turn - "change the memory...into a hope" - isn’t naive optimism so much as a claim about narrative power: the past can be carried as a scar that signals survival, not as a chain that guarantees repetition.
Quote Details
| Topic | Forgiveness |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Smedes, Lewis B. (n.d.). Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/forgiving-does-not-erase-the-bitter-past-a-healed-146807/
Chicago Style
Smedes, Lewis B. "Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/forgiving-does-not-erase-the-bitter-past-a-healed-146807/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/forgiving-does-not-erase-the-bitter-past-a-healed-146807/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.
