Science fiction is great for getting my mind churning. Sitting in the theater with an audience cheering the action and being impressed (or underwhelmed) by special effects is a great summer afternoon activity. But that’s not the whole reason it’s so much fun for me. Sci-fi is good at using the future and alternate realities to help us work out our cultural questions and apprehensions about the present so I’m always looking for something more, no matter how good or bad the movie.
Lisa Cole Smith
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This week I’ve been chewing on one of the lines from the remake of the Total Recall blockbuster: “The past is simply a construct of the mind. The heart wants to live in the present.” In the movie the task of the hero, Doug, is to work out the veracity of the statement in his situation. His quest is both physical and existential. Are we simply who we believe we are now or are we inescapably a product of who we have been?
The question has implications for me as a Christian. It’s informing a conversation I’m having with myself about what it means to be a new person in Christ. To what degree is my past self changed by repentance and God’s redemption? Sometimes I wish I could believe that certain parts of my past were only a construct of my mind, that all of my mistakes don’t add up to anything and the negative imprints people have left on my life could be erased like errant finger prints.
But that isn’t reality. I carry with me all of my experiences, good and bad. Some of them embolden me to act in the now, others inhibit me. In that way, it also seems naïve to say the heart wants to live in the present. In my experience, it is more accurate to say that the heart wants to live anywhere but the present. It’s difficult to live in the present, trusting that over which we have least control.
It would be tempting to leave the past behind and create alternate realities based on whatever this moment calls for. The problem is that if the past (and thereby the future) are simply constructs of the mind then all we have left with which to gauge reality are our subjectively swayed impulses in that moment—impulses based on the “heart.” With the past and future relegated to ephemeral unrealities ethics, identity and relationship simply become fuzzy concepts. Thank God we are not simply who we choose to believe we are.
But what can redemption do with the past? Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards” (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6172.S_ren_Kierkegaard). Past, present and future are linked together in an inseparable tension. If the past is not simply a construct then my memories are a part of who I am on a fundamental level. They inform my current decisions and perceptions. In order for total redemption to occur I must be transformed not only in the present but also in the past.
In Total Recall getting new memories was a potent and even dangerous experience because it was mind and personality altering on a deep level. Redemption is that kind of being-altering activity. Being made new means a constant reshaping into God’s image, a renewing of our mind and will. But God uses the raw materials of our experiences to do the work of renewal. We are not robbed of the consequences of sin because it reminds us of our need for a savior. Through repentance and redemption something very real happens to our very real selves in the past, present and future. It isn’t simply just a reframing of past events or a memory wipe. If that happened we would be living a lie. Instead we and our experiences are transformed. Injustice is colored by the reality of ultimate justice; sin and despair are experienced differently in the light of grace and mercy. While our memories and past stay the same, the framework of the world around them is transfigured through salvation.
Convincing ourselves that we can choose to remember the past according to our current desires is innocently deceptive wishful thinking. It is reflective of a pervasive desire in our culture to live as god of our lives without consequences in the world. It doesn’t account for the reality of sin or value the power of transformation. Like Doug in Total Recall, looking to the reality of the past teaches us who we were and also who we have become. Through God’s grace we are not doomed to repeat the same mistakes through naïve non-remembrance of paths already taken. Redemption blesses us not with new memories, but with new choices enabling us to live life forward leaning into faith.
Lisa Cole Smith (lsmith@convergenceccfnet) is pastor of Convergence: A Creative Community of Faith, a Baptist congregation in Alexandria, Va.