1. On pages 50-53, Miroslav Volf describes a moral obligation to remember truthfully and illustrates this point with examples of events remembered in an inaccurate order. Volf connects this with the biblical injunction not to bear false witness. Do you think remembering the correct order of events is an important feature of remembering truthfully? How do you think the biblical authors viewed the importance of factual truth and neat histories?
2. On page 65 Volf writes,
"to 'cover' or 'forget' wrongs, we must remember them in the first place!...the purpose of truthful memory is not simply to name acts of injustice, and certainly not to hold an unalterable past forever fixed in the forefront of a person's mind. Instead, the highest aim of lovingly truthful memory seeks to bring about the repentance, forgiveness, and transformation of wrongdoers, and reconciliation between wrongdoers and their victims.
When these goals are achieved, memory can let go of offenses without ceasing to be truthful. For then remembering truthfully will have reached its ultimate goal in the unhindered love of neighbor."
I think this is a beautiful exposition of the ideal situation (given that people/communities hurt and get hurt,) but what about situations of what is known is pyschology as magical thinking occurs, where an abuser seems to change and the victim believes it, and then the cycle of abuse happens over and over again? What does it mean to remember rightly in such situations of contrition and promise of change without lasting transformation? I know many of us have faced person situations where this is relevant and I am looking forward to any practical as well as reflective insights on what it means to love, forgive, remember or forget in these situations.
Labels: Book Discussions, Social Justice, Spiritual Formation, The End of Memory
Also makes me wonder about how love/consensus/mutuality are acheived in historical recollection, since history tends to live in the documentation of the majority or dominant viewpoint.