"And We indeed made a pact with Adam aforetime, but he forgot. And We found no resoluteness in him."
Quran 20:115
There's a great scene in the film Memento where Teddy is talking to Lenny and says, in frustration, "But you forgot, like you always forget." (I'm sure it popped into my head because I always show the film to my student in Concepts of the Self, and we were just going over the syllabus on the first day of class) This may seem like a strange transition to today's blog post, but there's actually an odd logic here. This passage is drawn from Ta Ha, the 20th surah, which is usually just rendered as, well, Ta Ha. As Nasr in the Study Quran proposes, "He forgot denotes Adam's forgetting his pact or abandoning it. The Prophet is reported to have said, 'Adam forgot, and thus his progeny forgot.'" The point here is that God reached an agreement with Adam, but Adam, being human, simply forgot, and thus all humans forget the nature, validity, and, well, existence of the agreement. Some of my Muslim friends, when trying to be clever, will point out that no one converts to Islam, rather they just revert to Islam, since that was/is the initial state of things. In Nasr's The Heart of Islam (which, again, you really should read, even if you're not a Muslim or thinking of ever becoming a Muslim, because it is truly fascinating) he makes the point that while the greatest crime in Christianity is disobedience, the greatest crime in Islam is forgetting. The point that Nasr is making is that it would be, from an Islamic point of view, inconceivable that you would not choose God, but it is possible that you might forget; again, not that forgetting is worse than disobeying, but disobeying is almost beyond comprehension. So why do humans forget? Isn't this another one of those questions centered around around "how could ______ be true if God is truly omniscient?" How could Adam or anyone ever forget God, or even just the nature of a relationship with God, if God is, well, God? Could it be that not only are we "allowed" to forget, but we're supposed to forget? Forgetting allows us to remember, and like many relationships that featured some time apart, our relationship with the divine might prove stronger after we "remember" it and recommit. In a broader sense, moreover, if human beings are free, and what's the point of choosing faith if we're not free, then we also, by definition, have the freedom to forget. So, is forgetting then a gift?
Quran 20:115
There's a great scene in the film Memento where Teddy is talking to Lenny and says, in frustration, "But you forgot, like you always forget." (I'm sure it popped into my head because I always show the film to my student in Concepts of the Self, and we were just going over the syllabus on the first day of class) This may seem like a strange transition to today's blog post, but there's actually an odd logic here. This passage is drawn from Ta Ha, the 20th surah, which is usually just rendered as, well, Ta Ha. As Nasr in the Study Quran proposes, "He forgot denotes Adam's forgetting his pact or abandoning it. The Prophet is reported to have said, 'Adam forgot, and thus his progeny forgot.'" The point here is that God reached an agreement with Adam, but Adam, being human, simply forgot, and thus all humans forget the nature, validity, and, well, existence of the agreement. Some of my Muslim friends, when trying to be clever, will point out that no one converts to Islam, rather they just revert to Islam, since that was/is the initial state of things. In Nasr's The Heart of Islam (which, again, you really should read, even if you're not a Muslim or thinking of ever becoming a Muslim, because it is truly fascinating) he makes the point that while the greatest crime in Christianity is disobedience, the greatest crime in Islam is forgetting. The point that Nasr is making is that it would be, from an Islamic point of view, inconceivable that you would not choose God, but it is possible that you might forget; again, not that forgetting is worse than disobeying, but disobeying is almost beyond comprehension. So why do humans forget? Isn't this another one of those questions centered around around "how could ______ be true if God is truly omniscient?" How could Adam or anyone ever forget God, or even just the nature of a relationship with God, if God is, well, God? Could it be that not only are we "allowed" to forget, but we're supposed to forget? Forgetting allows us to remember, and like many relationships that featured some time apart, our relationship with the divine might prove stronger after we "remember" it and recommit. In a broader sense, moreover, if human beings are free, and what's the point of choosing faith if we're not free, then we also, by definition, have the freedom to forget. So, is forgetting then a gift?
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