The Fight to Recover What Has Been Lost

On the work of the modern Christian in an age of secularism and distraction

Photo by Saied Ashour on Unsplash

I’m currently listening to what is (so far) a wonderful novel by Yōko Ogawa called The Memory Police about an island where objects and memories of those objects are banned and erased by the government. The few people who have the genetic composition to retain memories of things like “birds” are hunted down and disappeared from society. It’s a fascinating premise that has me thinking a lot about the way we remember and fail to remember what is important in our culture. We don’t have “memory police,” but we do have forces which systematically pressure us to forget the past and cling to the next thing (which you can buy or sign up for). We do have forces that systematically pressure us to neglect good, beautiful, and true parts of our civilization for what is cheap, easy, and immediately satisfying. And the results, as in the novel, is a world that is increasingly less colorful, vibrant, intelligent, and devoted to God. What role will AI play in the loss of memory for future generations? Will we forget what is essential because it no longer feels necessary to memorize Scripture or poetry or to understand how to read and interpret texts and ideas for ourselves? I think we’re already seeing the fruit of this. I think we’re already living in a culture in which the chief aim of the Christian intellectual is not advancing new theories about the world, but reviving and recovering what has always been true, doing the work of remembering together. And when you realize this, the pressure to compete for the ever-elusive “original” idea goes away, and you are left with a fight, a fight for our collective memory. How can we remember and act on what is good and beautiful and true in a culture that stifles and resists our collective memory?