BBC Radio 4 20170809

It’s one of the paradoxes of the internet age that online I can be both anonymous but also unable to hide. This week the government announced new laws that will help us control more of the data that is visible about us. And as we leave the EU, we will be deciding as a society how British law relates to a legal principle established in 2014; that online, I have the right to be forgotten.

The test case that established this principle was of a Spanish man whose house had been repossessed and auctioned to cover his debts. He argued successfully that this fact could be deleted from his history when his name was entered into a search engine.

The right to be forgotten is a striking phrase, especially in a society in which thanks to the internet, an overwhelming amount of information is available to us about every subject, about every person. About us. In claiming this right to be forgotten, I might want to have deleted from my internet history the photos of that night out or the row I had on Twitter, or the misjudged post or profile picture.

But claiming the right to be forgotten might seem to run counter to a Christian tradition that prizes remembering. The central action of a Christian communion service is to break bread “in remembrance” of Jesus. And remembering the past, returning to ancient prayers and liturgies is a key aspect of Christian spiritual practice.

But the truth is, that we often have quite a complicated relationship to our past personally. There are for us as adults, plenty of memories we carry, that either delight us or haunt us. There are things we have seen that we can’t un see – there are things we have said that we can’t un say – there are decisions we have made that we can’t un make.

One of the distinctive teachings of Jesus was exactly on this topic of our relationship to our past both as individuals and as communities. And it was his teaching about forgiveness. It’s been said that a good definition of forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past.
If I give up all hope of a better past, it’s possible to become more and more compassionate in the present, because I can allow myself a deeper understanding of my own and others’ mistakes, selfishness, mixed motives.

In the end, there is no re-running our past – so we have to do something else with it: look at it for what it is – face it, accept it, and work towards being reconciled to the person we once were. And the paradox may be that it’s in a brave remembering of my unvarnished past, that I can truly claim the right not only to be forgotten but to be forgiven and in time, maybe even to forget.