Does God want us to remember the bad things? I don’t know. At first I disagreed with the pastor last night who spoke at worship. He explained that God provides good things and that He would rather us remember them over the bad, from our past. Immediately I wanted to disagree, simply because that’s my tendency. I wanted to find where the man went wrong because he was man, and he can’t simply know what God is like. But the longer he spoke, and the more I thought, the more I came to agree with him.
I tried to think of example of Jesus using bad things in Israel’s past to teach a valuable lesson. Or something similar from Paul’s writings, or Peter’s or John’s. Or my own past. What I began to realize is that it’s true. God never bases anything off of the bad memories. Instead, it seems to me that God’s "way" is more the way of hope. I believe that we can, and should no doubt, learn much from our mistakes and the sad, bad, depressing, discouraging, oppressing, stressful things of our lives and the lives’ of others in the past. But for humans, the good things we can remember, and I believe should try to remember, are really what give us hope.
In my opinion, we can have hope from bad things as well as good things. But they seem to be different kinds of hope. For example, one could ponder one’s past and realize that there were terrible things there, but that there is a hope for the future. I think this is a stronger hope than that which is based on the good things. Because when we look back on the good things, we can hope that they will continue in the future, but it is not so much a deep yearning of a hope, but almost a simple expectation that the good things will continue. This still is confusing to me, as I seem to be contradicting myself. I will see if I can explain.
Although the hope coming from bad things is a stronger hope, to me, it seems that that is all it can be. Hope. But a hope stemming from the good things in our past, not only includes that hope, but also expectations and therefore an almost obligatory faith. (I suppose this would be my belief concerning Christians. For those who do not have the ultimate hope in our God, everything is probably much different. Perhaps I ought to ponder that for a while?) For if we choose to base our hope on our positive memories and experiences, then we can have hope for more of them in the future. Which, in other words, is expectations of them to occur. And in my life at least, I believe that these things ultimately come from God. Therefore, I have hope in God, expectations that He will continue to bless me. But since believing anything about God requires faith, then I must have faith to expect these good things to continue. Hope, expectations, faith.
Basically, I think I now agree with the pastor. God has done much for me and I believe He wants me to remember those things. How many times did He mention all the good things He’d done for the people of Israel or for the person He was specifically talking to, in trying to remind them to stay faithful to Him or trust Him? I think I remember there being many in the Bible. And as I have thought a little about this topic, I realize it is much nicer to dwell on the positive things in my past, than on the negative things. I think it’s just a better thing.