Serial (the Podcast) and God's Memory

How good is your memory? Hopefully better than Brian Williams’.

Can you remember where you were last Wednesday at 2:30? What about on the Wednesday at 2:30 six weeks ago? What if your freedom depended upon remembering such details?

For Adnan Syed, a teen convicted for a 1999 murder, a lapse in memory was quite detrimental. Adnan’s story is being told on the popular podcast, Serial. The podcast is a page-turning courtroom drama in audio form. Except that it’s a true story and the author doesn’t know the outcome. Its host is former ABC News, New York Times, and Baltimore Sun reporter Sarah Koenig.

Adnan is now in his early 30s and has spent half of his life behind bars. He has repeatedly declared his innocence in the murder of Hae Minn Lee, his former girlfriend and classmate at Baltimore’s Woodlawn High School. A friend of Adnan’s asked Koenig to study the case. In the podcast, Koenig chronicles her findings. She investigates like a prize-winning reporter and then narrates her discoveries in away that hooks you from the beginning.

The state’s case against Adnan is weak. There’s no DNA or physical evidence linking him to the murder. There’s one key witness. But there’s also Adnan’s faulty memory. By the time Lee’s body was found and the witness fingered Adnan, six weeks had passed. He doesn’t have much of an alibi because, well, he can’t remember what he was doing. He says this is because the day of Lee’s murder was a regular, normal, unmemorable day.

Adnan did do some fishy things on the day Lee disappeared. Sometimes you think he surely killed her. Other times, at least for me, you think there’s no way he did it. Which is the beauty of the podcast. Even Koenig says she doesn’t decisively believe Adnan or not.

As I get older, my memory seems to be getting as weak as my creaky right knee. I can recount every game of the 1984 World Series, but I’m not sure I can list all 33 of the students I taught last year. The 1988 NBA Finals stand out like they occurred yesterday. I’m pretty sure Miami and San Antonio met in the most recent Finals. But I’m not positive. I’ve never needed to keep a calendar of appointments. However, I’m now using a wall calendar since that day last year when I forgot to show up in court for a traffic ticket.

I’m sure we all have things we’d like to forget. The pain of a breakup. The harsh words of a colleague. Junior High … all of it. I’m finding that the more I love someone, the easier it is to forget something painful they’ve said or done. A parent, a sibling, a close friend – people I love and care for deeply – at one time or another have hurt me. Sometimes there’s a need to talk it out, but most of the time it’s not necessary. I think a greater love produces a greater forgetfulness. But for some reason, that same ability to forget doesn’t always apply to those farther down the love scale: a co-worker, a neighbor, or an acquaintance. What’s up with that?

You know who’s great at not remembering things?

God.

In Isaiah 43:15 God says, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” There is a difference between forgetting and not remembering. It’s not like God’s up in heaven struggling to find his keys to the pearly gates or forgetting where he placed his snow-making machine. Nor does he misremember events.

God’s memory is selective. He chooses to not remember.

Forgetting is what our fallible minds do. God, on the other hand, makes a choice not to bring our transgressions to his mind. Ever. To remember no more is God’s Common Core math equation of total forgiveness. My Sins + His Memory = Absolute Forgiveness.

Additionally, God doesn’t allow our sins to creep into his peripheral vision. Instead he hurls them into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19). God’s must have quite an arm because he throws our sins a hefty distance. How far? As far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).

To keep from forgetting, we write things down or make notes in our phones. Not so with God. He doesn’t have a note-pad or a sin-tracking app on his tablet. Psalm 130:3-4 says, “If you O Lord, kept a record of sins, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness: therefore you are feared.”

Of course, God wants us to follow his example. In the famous love chapter, I Corinthians 13, Paul writes that love “does not keep a record of wrongs”. And here’s where the rubber of the gospel has to meet the road of my heart. If I’m to love, forget, and forgive like God, then I can’t bring to my mind the times I’ve been slighted in the past by someone farther down the love scale. For to truly love someone … even just a little … you have to forgive as if you love them a lot. If a greater love produces a greater forgetfulness, and if God never remembers our sins … what does that say about how magnificent His love is for his children?

There’s new hope for Adnan, as the Maryland Court of Appeals is going to hear his case on the grounds that his attorney may have botched his defense. I hope you’ll check out Serial. Perhaps you’ll be as unsure as Koenig about Adnan’s guilt. The sands of uncertainty can be a scary place on which to stand. It’s powerful to remember that when it comes to God’s love and forgiveness, his children never have to find themselves walking on such unsteady soil.