They say that our brains are like a computer – this not only strikes me as reductive, but it makes me wonder if they ever had a brain. Such a notion assumes that the stuff we know and the memories we have are nothing more than readily accessible data . . . when clearly that’s not how it works. The slightest smell, a momentary glimpse, a long forgotten tune, are all capable of involuntarily triggering a data dump of memories – and if you’re lucky, you’ll experience a nostalgic interlude . . . otherwise, you can end up feeling emotionally ambushed.

Have you ever tried to remember someone’s name or struggled to think of a particular word? Did you ever take a test and knew the answer . . . and yet still couldn’t quite pull up the answer? So if my brain is basically just a computer, then it isn’t a very good one – interrupting me with unqueried information, while blue-screening on the very data I’m actually trying to access. Given that our lives were meant to be more than just a complex AI algorithm, the fact that we are more than just a repository of knowledge and experience should give us a clue about how we should relate to our past and all of the things we’ve learned.

We live at a time when everyone can be googled, unearthing searchable data so that our lives can be forensically unpacked and re-contextualized into a malleable narrative. It used to be that only newsworthy personalities had to contend with such an intrusive scrutiny. But now anyone applying for a job, volunteering at a soup kitchen, or just going out on a date, has likely been googled – and if you can’t be googled, well then, that’s just a whole other red flag. So apparently, we’ve all bought into the idea that a person is nothing more than a repository of misfit experiences, just data to be mined for some future inquisition.

How is it that we’ve arrived at such a mercilessly paranoid appraisal of one another? Ironically, this is the direct byproduct of existential relativism’s mischievous question: Who are we to judge? The original intent of which was meant to create a sophistry of moral ambiguity, believing that right and wrong were merely a human construct. But instead of making people less judgmental, it ironically has ended up allowing them to feel entitled to a more bloodless, exacting form of judgment that never forgives and never forgets – as a means of socially dispatching anyone we oppose.

The Pharisees bring an adulterous woman to Jesus (John 8:1-11) to see how he will pass judgment on her. But instead of confronting her with her guilt, which he could have done, he chose to forgive her. And invited everyone in the encircling crowd to throw their rocks at her, if they thought they weren’t in desperate need of forgiveness themselves – as it turned out, they were all in need of forgiveness . . . just like everyone of us do.

We want to pick up those stones because we feel entitled to confront the guilty with their guilt – but we also desperately want the type of forgiveness that’s willing to forget, that allows our future to be free of the fear of all the unexploded land mines in our past. The love of God keeps no ledger – our guilty deeds are removed, as far as the east is from the west (Psalms 103:12). This is the gift of things forgotten that we have received . . . and it is the gift we must learn to give to one another, as well.

In the end we all have to let it go…