The Memory-Hole and gnostic forgiveness
A Pandemic Amnesty
Several months ago an article from the Atlantic was making the rounds, “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty,” by Emily Oster. The heart of her article comes near the end:
“We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge… But we need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go. We need to forgive the attacks, too.”
I am willing to forgive anyone and everyone who comes with a repentant heart and confesses actual sins, calling them out as such. But what I hear Emily saying is, “Hey, we all did and said some bad stuff over the last 3 years. Let’s just forget about it and move on. It was a big oopsie. There were mistakes on both sides. It’s time to forgive and forget.”
And that, dear friends, I am unwilling to do, not because I am a bitter, grudge-holding, unforgiving man, nor because I am a legalist or a Donatist, but because I am a Biblical Christian. My wife, whose discernment and wisdom I cherish, said in a recent conversation, “You can’t have forgiveness without real repentance for actual sins.” That’s why all Christians, including Big Eva, should share an unwillingness to simply forget and move on, declaring a Pandemic Amnesty.
The Old “I Didn’t Know” Trick
In her article, Emily references several particulars of the pandemic which early on she believed to be true but later came to realize were not true. She claims that at the time there was no way she could have known otherwise. These include masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and vaccines, just to name a few. She, in a defeated and exhausted way, says simply, “We didn’t know.”
But some of us did know, and we knew right away. We knew all the way back in March and April of 2020, or as soon as mandates were introduced. The aim here is not to be self-congratulatory; the issue is how those who dissented were treated. Those of us who had solid evidence of the countervailing narrative and cited experts were treated in the most horrendous and despicable ways.
The COVID “Rap Sheet”
Let’s start with slander. We were called anti-government, anti-authoritarian, anti-science conspiracy theorists. We were called selfish, self-centered, short-sighted, individualistic scofflaws. We were called non-Christ-like, disobedient, lawless rebels. We were called angry, stupid, hot-headed troublemakers. I personally was called these things, to my face, behind my back, and all-over social media (I have receipts). Turns out these are baseless lies which are sinful.
How about the treatment we received. We were banned from restaurants, gyms, movie theatres, and bars. We were prohibited from flying on planes, travelling between provinces, leaving our country, and re-entering our country without serious restrictions and fines. We were disinvited from family holiday gatherings, prevented from going to church, kept away from older relatives, and accosted in every social gathering. We lost our jobs, we had our businesses ruined, we were kicked out of school, and we were forced to sell everything we have and move to another province or country just to stay afloat. I am not talking in hypothetical terms. I am talking about my friends, their livelihoods, and my own family. We really had to endure these things.
Why were we treated this way? Because we refused to cover our faces with masks, which we know do not protect anyone from contracting or transmitting a respiratory illness. We refused to take an injection, an experimental gene therapy that damages hearts, compromises immune systems, and actually increases the likelihood of getting and giving the virus, with worse symptoms. We questioned draconian lockdowns, lawless mandates, and we were skeptical of our elected officials and unelected health bureaucrats, who, by the way, gained more power and more wealth than ever before.
The Memory-Hole
It turns out, we were right. Not just about one thing, or a couple of things, but pretty much everything - the masks, the jabs, the lockdowns, the mandates, the PCR test, the State corruption - all of it. The numbers are out in the open for all to see, and the body is on the ground at the crime scene. Us crazies, who paid the highest of costs for our convictions and our integrity, have been vindicated and justified. But we stand with many people who have been negatively affected forever.
And Emily and her cohort just want us to forget and move on? That’s not how this works. That’s not true forgiveness.
I don’t want to labour how it is that we were right amidst the sea of legacy media misinformation. The simple truth is we looked at actual studies, not how the media covered them. We listened to actual doctors, not medical bureaucrats. We understood history, and we knew all about these “plays.” We did intense research, asked unpopular questions, and we were willing to be slandered and hated for it.
So, now that people like Emily Oster have been proven completely wrong and now that their hateful, uncalled for, evil thoughts, words, and actions have been exposed, they want to pretend as if they didn’t behave like a bunch of wild monkeys for the last 3 years. They want to minimize how we were treated. They want to toss the true facts and the actual statistics into the magical well of “forgiveness.” What they want is to toss it all into the Memory-Hole.
A Memory-Hole is “any mechanism for the deliberate alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened.” All of the sins of omission and commission that occurred over the last three and a half years, all of the information that we now know to be demonstrably true – they want to Memory-Hole all of it into oblivion. And they want us to go along with it under the banner of amnesty.
Real, Painful Forgiveness
They don’t want real forgiveness, where an actual person confesses an actual sin they committed to another actual person, which is essentially repentance. No, what they want is this ethereal kind of forgiveness, a forgiveness that doesn’t require a person to own up to real sins and ask for real forgiveness. What they want is a forgiveness that is gnostic – one that is disconnected from the reality of repentance, one that we are just supposed to grant and accept, because, as Emily Oster would say, we don’t want to gloat and keep a scorecard, do we? Respectfully, that’s not what’s going on, and she won’t get off that easy.
Christians need to be about forgiveness, and that begins with repentance. I am more than willing to offer forgiveness, full and final, for anyone who confesses real sins. I joyfully desire to unburden others who have sinned against me, in serious ways, by being reconciled to them and by no longer holding their sins against them. But I am not willing, under any circumstance, to simply let this go for the sake of moving forward and being nice. I won’t pretend that the past did not happen, and I won’t enter into a false reality. I won’t engage in a gnostic forgiveness that neither honours Christ nor honours others. I will not gloss over what friends and loved ones went through, because of their conscience and convictions, just to make other people feel better about their evil and vile actions. I won’t join in the Memory-Hole, allowing people to avoid inconvenient truths, chief among them that they were wrong about everything – and I mean everything.
Let me offer some examples of what repentance looks like in light of a pandemic amnesty:
Asking for forgiveness for the slanderous, hurtful, and flat-out untrue things that were said to others, citing specific examples of sinful statements and personal attacks.
Asking for forgiveness for unloving and divisive actions, including uninviting or barring people from holiday/family gatherings, prohibiting people from entering business because of personal medical decisions, and blocking people on social media.
Asking for forgiveness for demanding that others wear masks, socially distance, and show proof of a COVID injection in order to work or simply spend time with other people.
Asking for forgiveness for binding the consciences of Christians, including forcing them to stay home and barring them from corporate worship, telling them not to sing or greet others or celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and discouraging fellowship/physical gatherings.
Asking for forgiveness for handing over reign and rulership of the local church to the State, operating out of fear (the virus, public opinion, or legal consequences), and operating as a hireling instead of a good undershepherd of the flock.
If any of these above-mentioned items cause you to get upset or defensive because you know you have sinned in one of these ways, may I suggest that instead of justifying your sin and appeasing your conscience, you press into the conviction that the Holy Spirit has brought upon you, confess your sins to God, confess your sins to one another, and move forward in repentance and integrity. Trust me, you will not walk in the peace and joy of Christ if you persist in unrepentance and refuse to do your part in reconciliation. Otherwise, there can be no forgiveness.
The True Way Forward
Emily Oster concludes her article with these words:
“The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.”
What she hopes for is gnostic forgiveness, one that is neither honest nor painful – both of which are required for real forgiveness and real reconciliation.
I will admit that the last three and a half years have been filled with complicated choices and many mistakes. I also agree that we need to work together to rebuild relationships and move forward in unity and love. But that only happens once people are honest that the last three and a half years have been about MORE than just complicated choices and mistakes. We have seen intentional and hurtful sins committed against one another. We have seen brutal slander, ungodly actions, and decisions that will quite literally affect people for the rest of their lives. In order to move forward in a way that honours Christ we will have to engage in the humbling, uncomfortable, and inconvenient process of saying, “I am sorry for… I was wrong when I… I should never have… I promise I will try to never do these things ever again.”
Christians are people who pursue truth in all areas. We must be honest about who we are, what we do, and what is required of us to obey Christ. We cannot lie about the last 3 years, and we cannot allow others to lie about it as well. We must hold brothers and sisters in Christ accountable for their actions, and we have to do so honestly and objectively. We must not take part in the Memory-Hole. We dare not engage in gnostic forgiveness. How I long for churches to know the healing power of genuine forgiveness and reconciliation borne out of sincere and honest repentance. Imagine how effective we can be as united lights in this dark world.