Remembering: Enervating Nostalgia or Energizing Memory?

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Two Very Different Kinds of Remembering

In Isaiah 43:18 we encounter this strange imperative: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old” (NRSV). This is an unusual prophetic exhortation to God’s people, since the pages of the Old Testament are littered with calls for Israel to remember and not to forget. What are we to make of this apparent paradox, and how might it instruct us in the here and now experience of the people of God?

The first element to explore in this verse is the verb that is set in parallel with “do not remember.” The NRSV translates it “do not consider;” the CEB gets closer to the sustained nature of the action with “don’t ponder.” In this case, the NIV probably expresses it best: “Do not dwell.” Both the underlying Hebrew verb (bîn, in the hithpolel) and the Septuagint’s Greek translation of it (sullogizomai) communicate the act of giving diligent attention to something, of lingering with it, of deliberating together about it. (The verb is in the plural, and in the Greek, the prefix indicates corporate activity. This is not primarily an action of the individual, but something in which the community of faith engages together.) The prophet says that for God’s people in that moment (in the midst of exile), the former things and the things of old are not the appropriate focus of their sustained attention. 

This seems particularly startling, given that the immediately preceding verses rehearse the memory of Yahweh’s mighty deeds of liberation in the exodus, expressed in a vivid present tense translation in the NRSV: “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise; they are extinguished, quenched like a wick” (Isa. 43:16–17). As we read verses 16–18 in sequence, the sense seems to be this: Remember who I am, but don’t dwell on my past acts, because what is coming will be even more miraculous and liberating than those remembered events. This sense is heightened by the divine word in verse 19: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” This is a call for God’s people not to let memory keep them looking backwards, but to allow it to produce hope as God sets before them new vistas of his faithfulness. This “new thing” will include the pouring out of God’s Spirit on his people (44:3) and their renewed commitment to the Lord, which will include a rejection of all idols (44:6–20).

It seems to me that Isaiah 43 illustrates two different kinds of remembering. One of these is a purposeful remembering in which recalling God’s past faithfulness infuses us with hope and trust for the future, even when the present is bleak or distressing. The other is a kind of remembering that keeps our attention fixed resolutely on the past, ruminating on memories (and myths?) that are often centered more on our own experiences than on the God of history. Isaiah 43 invites us to consider the difference between robust biblical memory as an instrument of the Spirit for energizing the people of God for the future and mere nostalgia as a temptation that can leave us enervated and impotent in the present.

Nostalgia

The word “nostalgia” has a fascinating history. The Oxford Dictionary defines nostalgia as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations” (emphasis added). The word was originally coined to refer to an unwanted medical condition (algia = pain), which may explain its use to describe the posture of looking back at a happy past as an escape from a painful present. Johannes Hofer, a Swiss doctor treating soldiers in the early 18th century, used the term nostalgia to name a “mania tied to homesickness,” with symptoms ranging from melancholy and malnutrition to brain fever and hallucinations. Those who were caught up in nostalgia developed a particular lens through which they viewed the past: the nostalgic “embellishes the memories attached to the places where he was brought up, and creates an ideal world where his imagination revels with an obstinate persistence” (emphasis added).

Nostalgia—it’s that sentimental backward look at a lost “Golden Age” that may be more myth than memory, at those “good old days” that acquire more legendary luster with each wistful retelling. Nostalgia is all about the loss of a particular past moment, wrapped in a rosy cloak of selective memory, and its longed-for recovery in the present. Nostalgia refuses to acknowledge the complexities of every moment in history, infusing that particular lost experience with a monochromatic positivity that was never part of its reality. This is exactly what Israel is called not to engage in, per Isaiah’s prophetic word! The strange scene in Ezra 3 may illustrate the effects of this kind of enervating nostalgia—there is a group who resolutely look backward, so completely focused on the loss of the grandeur of Solomon’s temple that they can neither remember the reasons for its destruction nor join the jubilant celebration of God’s new thing in their midst (however small and insignificant that new thing may seem in that moment). 

Memory 

Biblical memory, on the other hand (the kind envisioned by the repeated “remember and do not forget” commands), is purposeful and energizing. It is focused on who God is (present), what he has done (past), and how his character and his past acts unite with his promises to shape faith and hope for the future. The book of Deuteronomy is a marvelous example of this; as Israel is poised to experience God’s “new thing” (the fulfillment of covenant promises in the land to which he’s been leading them), Moses calls them to purposeful memory of the One who has rescued them, of his mighty acts on their behalf, and of his expectations for their life together as covenant partners (cf., e.g., Deut. 4:9–10, 32–40; 8:11–20). They look backward in order to move forward; their capacity to envision the future is shaped by their correct understanding of the past.

And at the very heart of Christian worship is an act of purposeful remembering. The eucharist calls the church to repeated remembering of God’s mighty acts in Christ Jesus (the past). This participatory memory pushes us forward into ministry and mission (the present): “By your Spirit make us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world.” The enacted, embodied participation of the church in eucharistic memory also anticipates with joyful hope the assured ending of our redemption Story (future): “until Christ comes in final victory and we feast at his heavenly banquet.”

Conclusion

Why does this matter? As Dr. Wilmer Estrada (Asbury Theological Seminary) said to a group of Latin American seminary leaders (Medellín, 2024): “Nostalgia leaves you stagnating in the past. Memory gives you the possibility of changing your present and projecting yourself toward the future” (my translation). The church in the global north, in our historical-cultural moment, faces the seductive temptation of the resolutely backward look, the sentimental longing for an unrecoverable past now seen only through rose-colored glasses or rewritten by narratives of loss. Such nostalgia will leave us enervated and impotent for the challenges of the present and those rosy lenses will render us unable to see clearly the “new thing” that even now is bubbling up around us, as God meets new generations of his image-bearers with his anticipatory grace and his redemptive rescue mission. As a eucharistic people, we must resist nostalgia (“don’t dwell on the past,” urges the prophet!) while embracing the purposeful memory that will energize our present and thrust us into God’s future.

Rachel Coleman is affiliate professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, profesora adjunta de Nuevo Testamento for United Theological Seminary, and the regional theological education coordinator (Latin America) for One Mission Society. She serves on Firebrand’s Editorial Board.