Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Steph Ebert's avatar

Have you read The End of Memory by Miroslav Volf? The one aspect I really appreciated in his work was the idea that not every evil has to be "redeemed" by our story and woven into this grand positive, "growing" narrative, which it feels to me sometimes leads Christians down a path of just gaslighting others or even themselves? But that some evils will just be declared evil and driven out when Christ renews all things.

This also reminds me of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in South Africa... there it was collective trauma as well as individual truama, and trying to write a cohesive history for the country that included these traumas... trying to get all the "siblings" to listen to each others truth. There has been so much written about the intersection of truth, memory, and justice at that time. Some people here are still quite upset about the justice aspect -- they spilled their truth in public and feel no justice happened-- like, if we can all agree this is true, and it *did* happen, what do we do about it? I think Tutu felt that healing was more important than legal punishment when dealing with such convoluted circles of victims and perpetrators, and that just hearing each others truth could be healing... and maybe in many ways, for participants it was? But the next generation feels like "nothing happened!" And the collective memory of both grandchildren of victims and perpetrators gets more black and white and less grey.

Expand full comment
Annelise Roberts's avatar

This resonates so much. I’ve dealt with a lot of childhood trauma and I often wonder why my reality feels so different from my siblings. I tell the truth in the most honest way I can. I wonder what story have they needed to survive, or if their experience really was so very different. Mostly I just keep praying that God would reveal the truth, even if it means I’m wrong. I think (and hope) that if our desire really is for the truth, we will find more and more of it, even when it’s painful.

Expand full comment
7 more comments...

No posts