The Case of Faulty Memories
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. John 14:26 NASB
Remembrance – We often read this verse as if it is Yeshua’s eternal promise that the Spirit will somehow ensure we will never forget what he taught. Perhaps that’s correct. Perhaps that’s all Yeshua meant. But I suspect there is more to this statement simply because it highlights how crucial God’s intervention is in remembering the teachings of the Messiah. Why would I think this? Because human memory is basically unreliable.
“Memories evolve and change. Immediately after a memory is laid down, it undergoes a lengthy process of integration and reinterpretation—a process that automatically happens in the mind/brain without any input from the conscious self. When the process is complete, the experience is integrated with other life events and stops having a life of its own.”[1] Human memories are integrated into the paradigm we use to make sense of the world. Since memories are partly elastic, they are shaped to fit what we already believe to be the case. As my friend Bob often says, “The greatest impediment to learning anything new is what you think you already know.” It seems to me that Yeshua is saying more than the fact that the Spirit will enlighten us. It seems to me that he is saying that when it comes to what he has taught, there is a need for the intervention of God to make sure we don’t reconstitute the memories to fit our own version of the world. This doesn’t mean we are prevented from misinterpretation or mistaken recall. God doesn’t force us to replay the events with absolute accuracy. What it means is that without the influence of the Spirit, these memories will be subject to the same reintegration as all other human memories. Without divine oversight, things will slide toward “normal.”
There is another reason why Yeshua’s statement is crucial. What is soon to transpire among his disciples is a serious traumatic experience, and trauma has another effect on memory. Trauma disrupts this process. Trauma is not integrated into a consistent self-image. Instead, it remains in fragmented form as independent, often incompatible, flashbacks and distressing emotions. Trauma is the experience of the immediacy of the event, replaying the emotional qualities over and over. The problem is that trauma actually rewires the brain. As Freud and Breuer noted more than fifty years ago, “Trauma does not simply act as a releasing agent for symptoms. Rather, ‘psychical trauma’—or more precisely the memory of the trauma—acts like a foreign body which long after its entry must continue to be regarded as an agent that still is at work.”[2]
So we need the influence of the Spirit in order to reconstruct memory according to God’s intentions. Without that influence, our memories are more likely to express our reconstructed fragmented stories. What Yeshua promises is not a newsreel of theological accuracy but the moderating interaction of God’s presence in order that the public recollection will reveal God’s truth.
Finally, there is another reason why the Spirit must intervene. “ . . . up to 90 percent of human communication occurs in the nonverbal, right-hemisphere realm”[3] of the brain. That means we must engage the emotional brain if we are going to “hear” Yeshua’s words correctly. We must feel the words in such a way that they affect who we are, not just how we think. And for that to happen, God must give us a bit of help.
Topical Index: remembrance, memory, Spirit, emotions, John 14:26
[1] Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Penguin Books, 2014), pp. 257-258.
[2] J. Breuer and S. Freud, “The Physical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena,” cited in Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, p. 248.
[3] Ibid., p. 300.
This is my testimony! God is so good! Some years ago I had a burnout because of stress! I had to stop work for about a year and half. My brain did not work well. I had big problems just to read. I asked God how to read His word now, I was very sad about this? Then I suddenly remembered His word in my heart and as He kept telling/helping me retrieve I realized that I had His word inside of me! This was wonderful experience. Nowadays I can read again without problem so I have no excuse anymore. There is an exiting science going on about the heart and brain cooperation. I personally think, my heart (where God and the truth is) dominates my brain. Thanks for your good teachings Skip, they are enlightening!
Please forgive me for trying to follow this bouncing ball, y’all. I think the question for me is, WHY do we all have paradigms we work out of? I think paradigms are neither ‘evil’ or ‘good’; rather, they are tools that show where we are at, so, then, how do we use these tools correctly?
If all true knowledge (what we identify ourselves, or, agree, with) is a collection of experience (according to how I read Scripture, anyway) – if truth is something that MUST be verified (lived) in the life before it can even BE truth for me – then paradigm (what I “think I already know”) is how I process my experience into knowledge (really, memory). This must be why, to change someone’s paradigm, you have to work WITH their existing paradigm by changing their EXPERIENCE. Perhaps this is why head ‘knowledge’ of real things like salvation does not get the job done, or why someone who ‘knows’ the truth, but is not actually doing it themselves, is a hypocrite, and truth does not have its ring in their lives. Take love, for example. You can tell someone about it, but if you are not actually loving them in the process, they are not going to ‘learn’ it from you. That does not mean love can be forced onto anyone: they can, likewise, also choose not to return (trust) it. The experience (function) of love is a two-way street, after all. I can only KNOW someone’s love if I actually participate in (return) it. People who sin by rejecting love (refuse to participate in it) will have a very different paradigm to work out of; their knowledge (experience) base will be different.
Trauma breaks the paradigm (that “consistent self image”, or, identity): this is why it is painful. All trauma is a result of sin; trauma is, literally, “knowledge (experience) of sin”, whether it is sin against others, or sin of others against us (I can be traumatized just as much by choosing to not trust as I can by not being trusted). To KNOW the Law, then, for us, anyway, is therefore the EXPERIENCE of sin, for that is when the full weight (experience of the curse) of that Law comes down on us. I think people hate the Law in the flesh because they experience it as a curse; literally, as trauma. We all know from experience (trauma) what the betrayal of trust is, for all evil, or, betrayal of trust, is a result of the breaking of the Law. Breaking that Law does not just break God’s heart: it breaks ours, too (trauma), for we are made in His image so His experience is also ours, whether we like it or not. Hey, sin is traumatic for Him, too!
The experience of trauma, then, differs from person to person. It is not what life throws at us, but how we choose to perceive (function of our particular paradigm) and handle it, that determines whether or not we experience it as traumatic or not. People have gone ‘postal’ over paper cuts, while others have sung serenely while burning at stakes. This is determined more by whether we are choosing to stay in trust (or not) than it is by whether or not others are choosing to break our trust (sin against us). Why? Because we can choose to stay in forgiveness as a way of keeping trauma at bay. (Perhaps this is how God is choosing to keep His at bay?) None of us are walking in perfect trust (and forgiveness) yet, but trauma shows us where those break points are. Its not a question of whether or not we have betrayed or been betrayed, but what we DO (experience) about it. Our paradigms (data base of that experience) will shift accordingly.
Sorry I don’t have time right now to first read other replies, but this is my first thought on this amazing insight: This understanding of the working memory is then also very crucial in our understanding the MISUNDERSTANDINGS within relationships and emphasizes the cruciality of getting the help of the Ruach in rightly understanding what’s going on with ourselves and with the others with whom we are in conflict. It’s about submitting to God (bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Messiah) and resisting the adversary (the Liar and Father of lies), seeking to get insight, knowledge, understand, and wisdom about, not only the truth of what true, but also of the truth of what is not true, those altered paradigms and triggers we all have, guarding ourselves against bearing false witness, making accusations, as well as becoming defensive, and really listening, not only to ourselves and others, but to the Ruach. Only then can we effectively seek and find shalom. Selah.
Hello Skip and Others,
I am reading this reflection in the light of the arrival of Pentecost/Shavuot. Ann-Louise experience is traumatic. G-d in His mercy saw her through by bringing Scripture to her memory during the time when reading was difficult. On the Shavuot we read about in Acts 2, it must have been extraordinary, maybe traumatic, to hear the disciples speaking in ethnic tongues identified by those who also spoke those languages. G-d appearing before Moshe and the Exodus at Mt. Sinai would have been quite extraordinary too. I guess today, Shavuot isn’t so much a collective experience as it is an individual experience now. “You shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,” spoken to the disciples but generally understood now as a personal promise. Not sure how we change that to a community phenomenon? I am somewhat surprised how few of my FB friends reacted to the question, Is Pentecost a big deal anymore? Two out of 153 said yes.
David Russell
Love it Skip. Keep it going. As someone who has been working through trauma and helping others to do the same, I learned years ago about truth “deficits”. When trauma happens as a child, you don’t always understand what’s going on as well as what’s going on in the world around you. The Spirit gave me understanding to see things that were going on back then that I couldn’t possibly see and understand as a child.
It’s like the Depression, people will talk about how bad and hard it was, but then they’ll talk about all the good and the family relationships and the closeness. I think this is a big part of remembering, that if we’re willing, God will bring us to see the good as well as the bad, and to help us understand things we couldn’t see as children. I hope that makes sense. Blessings.
I am appreciating this Trauma thread. Because Y’shua is in the process of healing my deepest traumas’ and this is helping me disconnect from the past paradigms based on them. Sorting through the idea’s, emotions and worst of all the self defenses created to protect that wounded little boy is helpful. I’m telling him to sit down and be quite, he’s in the way now…
That’s good. Don’t be too hard on him, though. After all, he’s just a kid. You don’t want to invalidate and re-traumatize him. ; )
Re: ‘psychical trauma’—or more precisely the memory of the trauma—acts like a foreign body which long after its entry must continue to be regarded as an agent that still is at work.”
You do realize that J Breuer and S Freud were spiritists, right? Any cursory research on either of them would turn it up, one can start w/Megabrain, i do not recall the author, but the contents open up that discussion rather starkly and it’s bibliography will give sufficient resources to firmly conclude the issue.
Both of the individuals were highly aware of the spirit world reality and were convinced of the righteousness of developing a counter religion to Messiah (it matters not the flavor, just that humanity be directed away from pure holiness). They created a new religion, one that focussed on the individual and kept that person worshiping at the feet of other humans. (Therapists, etc.).
When they did their research and wrote their papers they included nebulous references such as “foreign body” to both acknowledge and simultaneously direct away from the Truth and true healing found in Messiah.
Those “foreign bodies” are evil spirits. The ‘entry’ is more clearly termed as ‘door point’ wherein that evil spirit gained access to you and your life. Any deliverance ministry will address such topics and will teach one how to identify and deal with such things. The body DOES keep score and the body, being flesh, will basically be susceptible to attack from the spirit world so long as it lives.
Only YHVH heals and delivers. Period. The community is full of faces that perform for each other, but YHVH will cut that performance to the quick, individually and personally, and ONLY in HIS time.
Head knowledge is what my ex-husband constantly accused me of, generally when he was in a full out rage, quoting Scripture half an inch from my face and demanding my submission to edicts that i had no way of being able to address to his satisfaction and that were in direct contradiction to what YHVH had already laid out for me. One can imagine my response to that term today.
My head is what went on the blink, a la Ann-Louise’s post, wherein she noted she couldn’t even read. I couldn’t speak for the longest time, couldn’t hold a coherent thought and couldn’t pray except for intermittently being able to say “YHVH, i am so sorry”, for what, i couldn’t even fathom, so overwhelming was the list.
There are two perils i have found in communities: the tendency to believe that someone in the community hears from YHVH for you BETTER then you, and the tendency to think YHVH doesn’t know how to get your attention and deliver you and/or guide you out of the trauma.
YHVH. Alone. Is sufficient.
Believe. That.
I’m so thankful for what I have been trough because it stopped me from being a complete “idiot”. I used to think I was invincible and knew everything best, always working, giving away my time to others (nursing). Proud and pompous, even in economy. Now learning that I really need God YHVH in my life, to listen and be still, find peace within and now have opened up my heart for teachings like this! There is so much more knowledge, and this teaching of Torah that keep me hungry. But, I do have a long way to go. Time with the Lord is most precious and to share with you’re loved ones.