"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
Smedes refuses the feel-good fantasy that forgiveness is a mental delete key. The opening move is almost confrontational: forgiving "does not erase" anything. That blunt negation matters because it stops the reader from using forgiveness as a shortcut around grief, accountability, or history. "A healed memory is not a deleted memory" is the line’s quiet engine: it treats memory like a wound that can close without pretending the injury never happened. The intent isn’t to sanctify forgetting; it’s to legitimize the fact that some harms remain vivid even after reconciliation.
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.
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 |
|---|
More Quotes by Lewis
Add to List
