"Do This In Remembrance"
We are worshippers of not-forgetting.
As we round out another decade in the 21st century, it’s more obvious than ever. A ubiquitous fear of disremembering fuels modern technological advance, and consequently, every year presents us with new ways to keep our memories in permanent solitary confinement behind a screen—always more data storage, higher quality phone cameras, and easier social media sharing. As a culture, we deify the avoidance of forgetting; devote our time and money to it; configure our lives around it.
It’s understandable enough: to remember is to be human, and the thought of losing that humanity produces a raw nervousness within us. It’s the impetus for Snapchat, the awfulness of Alzheimer’s disease, the instigator of the FOMO epidemic, and it grows up around us like a weed. For not-forgetting is not the same as remembering. I suppose that’s because nothing driven by fear can be very authentic. Fear is cheap fertilizer, and the roots it grows are shallow. Loving someone because you are afraid of losing them isn’t love; likewise, remembering things because you are afraid of forgetting them isn’t remembrance.
Anyone who has ever been in a romantic or platonic relationship knows that memory is like relationship currency. And memory is motivated and procured by love. With it, we invest in relationships—by remembering the birthdays, the first date stories, and the secrets told five years prior, we show our love and validate our statuses as good friends, partners, siblings or neighbors. This is love-catalyzed remembering, and it has nothing to do with fear. It’s the practice of caring for someone by way of having a well-constructed idea of them.
Fascinatingly, neuroscience has proven that this practice of remembering is enhanced by being tested. Essentially, the brain goes into a temporary survival mode when forced to recall memorized information, refortifying itself as a reaction to that temporary deviation from normalcy. Contrary to the negative reputation that stress has earned in our society, the stress hormones that testing releases in your brain are actually quite productive in that they promote long-term recollection. These hormones flag the information as valuable and important to keep, creating a kind of vault in your brain for easier and clearer recall the next time that set of memories is tested. It seems, then, that a threatened memory is practically synonymous with a bolstered memory.
In our pervasively forgetting-phobic culture, these observations about memory have massively profound implications for the Christian life. First, remembering is not merely a neurological capability; it is a holy practice that bears eternal weight. That Jesus asks His disciples hours before His death to take communion “in remembrance of me” is incredibly significant. Here is that love-catalyzed remembering, that backbone of all human relationship. It is so fitting that Jesus would ask his closest friends to participate in it and to channel it as a holy sacrament until His return. To remember is to practice love for God, as well as love for neighbor and love for self. To remember is to recognize, respect, and reciprocate relationship.
Second, neuroscience is preaching a sermon that the Church needs to hear: not all testing is bad. We have practically made a cardinal virtue out of never testing God. And though it is promised to us as an inevitable byproduct of following Jesus, we still go about our lives hoping that God never tests us, either. The beauty and necessity of testing is lost on us—we do not understand the spiritual vitality of sleeplessly wrestling with God like Jacob, nor do we truly embrace the merit of being tested by God like Abraham.
In the Old Testament, there is this give-and-take relationship between God and His people that is practically nonexistent in the Church today. We are a generation of cripplingly fearful people who are afraid to ask God for too much of anything, as if there is such thing as “too much”—we worship the God who invited Israel to “challenge [Him} to deliver the blessings [He] promised” (Malachi 3:10)! It is abundantly clear from Scripture that God prohibits testing motivated by fear-filled doubt. But is this fear-filled false contentedness we exhibit now any better? I’d venture to say no.
Like remembrance, there is a holy and eternally important type of testing to which God invites us as His people, His beloved. Our relationship with Him frees us up; it gives us access to Him and asking privileges. This type of testing is fearless, and it is inextricably linked to remembering. As we remember that God has made good on His promises in the past, we test Him by asking Him to do it again. With the boldness that only God’s perfect track record can inspire, we can approach God’s throne and “test” His goodness.
And as for the merit of being tested, James says it better than I: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Our hearts ought to operate like our brains, always looking to convert threats into thick skin. And that can only happen when we live in remembrance, accepting tests as opportunities to deepen our long-term knowledge of, love for, and trust in God’s goodness.
Constantly, the practice of remembering is spinning greater and deeper and more expansive love in our hearts like a web. The more we remember what God has done for us, the more we love Him. The more we love Him, the more we pay attention to what He is doing, which is essentially remembering. And the cycle continues, unbroken even by testing, since we know that the testing of our faith produces perseverance.
words by Delaney Young and photo by Emma Tally