In chapter 4 of Volf’s The End of Memory, we find that memories are not healed merely by remembering them truthfully. We saw in the 3rd chapter that truthful memory is a beginning but now he points out that memory is not merely a cognitive act. They are “also a form of doing (67).” Memory is both passive (pops into our heads without our consent) and actively pursued. We use or “act on” our memories and they, in turn, “act on us, too.” Volf uses most of this chapter to explore this problem: “But how is it possible to remember truthfully when distortions of memories are a deep wound’s most frequent manifestation?” [because of the truth of the victimization is too difficult to bear]. He asks, “How can we blunt the wounding blade of painful memories without sacrificing their truthfulness?” (76). Volf reminds us that healing is influenced by external elements (e.g., perpetrators repenting and seeking to provide restitution, providing a safe environ, etc.) as well as internal elements (i.e., that the event does not hinder hope for a future, exhaustively define, and that life continues to have meaning).
Volf lists three ways to do these internal elements
1. “Integrating remembered wrongdoing into our life-story” (e.g., seeing them from a positive light (Joseph and his brothers), labeling them as senseless acts in an otherwise meaningful life
2. New identity (we are not to define ourselves solely as survivor or victim but as one who has “the abiding flame of God’s presence” in all that we do or experience. Our new identities are defined by God and not by wrongdoers.)
3. New possibilities (“When Christ’s promise defines our possibilities, memories of the traumatic past become for us just that–memories of one segment of our past.”) (p. 82)
Notice that healing is not the removal of pain but the insertion/reinsertion of a larger truth. I’m reminded of Aslan’s comments to the children about his death at the hands of the White Witch and subsequent resurrection. Evil had seemingly won the victory over good, but “there was a deeper magic that even the White Witch did not know.” We have to see the larger tapestry of life from the Lord’s point of view if we are to put some renegade threads in their proper context.
Musings on Faith and Psychology 