Memory exercises
Recently I've been reading through the book of Deuteronomy. It's hard overlook the fact that the author is very keen on the Israelites being mentally apt. He uses the word ‘forget’ (and its variants) 12 times and the word ‘remember’ (and its variants) 13 times. Moses thought that remembering what God had done in the past, and not forgetting what God promised to do in the future, was very important.
Forgetting is a terrible thing. My 94-year-old grandmother suffers from Alzheimer's disease, and can rarely remember who I am and, worse, who she is. Grandma is no longer the ‘grandma’ that I and the rest of my family remember; because she has lost the ability to remember her past, she has lost her present identity.
This is what Moses warned the Israelites about. In forgetting their past, they forgot who they were in the present. They lost their identity as God's chosen rescued people. Worse still, they then went on to forget how to act as God's chosen people who had been called to live in faith and obedience.
This has been a timely reminder for me. Often I concentrate my daily war against sin on the more intentional and insidious sins of the flesh—the times when I do desire to disobey the Lord. But those moments are few. More often than not, I rebel against God not by intentionally shaking my first at him and vowing to go my own way; I rebel by not evening thinking about who he is and who I am in Christ. I forget to trust his words and his ways and so, by default, I end up living my own way. At times like these, my rebellion is rooted in the simple act of forgetting.
In concentrating so much on what some would call ‘major sins’, I forget to wage war against forgetting because it is so innocent and subtle. It is not the type of sin that people usually confess to. It is not the type of sin people ask their accountability partners to help them overcome. To most, it is unintentional. While it may cause others hurt (e.g. when a husband forgets his wedding anniversary), it isn't a sin that would obviously cause our downfall.
But according to Moses, it's a sin that results in great tragedy. Just look at the generation that forgot and thus was not allowed to enter the heaven-like Promised Land, perishing instead in the hellish wilderness. Moses kept returning to the idea of memory because there was quite a bit at stake.
Just as the Israelites were called upon over and over again to remember their grand rescue from Egypt, I am called upon over and over again to remember my grand rescue through the cross of Christ. I am called upon to remember my true identity as a child of God who lives for and rejoices in God's glory. And as I work on this simple act of remembering, I have a feeling those insidious sins will start to fall by the wayside.