Remembering Rightly

Memory, Trauma, and Healing through a Biblical Worldview

The Crisis of Memory in Modern Counseling

In today’s counseling landscape, memory has become a battleground. On one side stands the trauma-informed worldview, which has brought immense help by naming pain, acknowledging wounds, and validating experience. But on the other side lies a quiet danger: the temptation to let trauma define a person’s identity. Memory, in this view, becomes less about truth and more about power—less a site of redemption and more a shrine to the self’s most wounded moment.

This is not how the Bible teaches us to remember.

Scripture calls us not just to remember, but to remember rightly. Biblical memory anchors us not in pain, but in promise. It doesn’t deny suffering, but it insists that suffering does not have the final word. The biblical story reframes our past in light of God’s character, covenant, and redemption.

As Miroslav Volf puts it in The End of Memory:

“If we remember rightly, we remember not the wounds we suffered but the healing we received, not the evil we endured but the good that overcame it.”

In this article, I want to explore what it means to remember rightly. We'll contrast a biblical theology of memory with the trauma-informed worldview, highlighting both the gains and the gaps of the latter. And we’ll look at what it means to counsel people toward redemptive remembrance—helping them relocate their pain inside the larger and more glorious story of God.

A Biblical Theology of Remembering

The Bible is a book of memory. The people of God are repeatedly called to remember who they are by remembering what God has done.

• “Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth” (Deut. 8:18).

• “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out” (Deut. 5:15).

• “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).

Biblical memory is not nostalgia. It is covenantal. It connects the past to the present by reminding God’s people that they live in the continuity of His redemptive work. Remembering is how the people of God resist forgetfulness, idolatry, and despair. It is how they maintain their identity—not through self-examination alone, but through God-centered narration.

To remember biblically is to locate ourselves in a story where God is the Hero. We remember to worship, to obey, to rejoice, and to trust.

Trauma-Informed Worldview: Gains and Gaps

The trauma-informed movement has provided language for deep and unspeakable wounds. It has helped people understand why they feel what they feel, and has validated the lasting effects of abuse, neglect, and violence. In that sense, it has served as a grace—offering safety and support to many who were previously misunderstood.

But its growing dominance in counseling brings with it some anthropological distortions.

Gains:

• Honors the reality of pain.

• Emphasizes safety and attunement.

• Helps name triggers, dysregulation, and implicit memory.

Gaps:

• Identity becomes injury. The self is increasingly seen through the lens of what has happened to it, rather than what it was made for or what it can become in Christ.

• Memory becomes mastery. Healing is assumed to require fully remembering, articulating, and processing the traumatic event.

• The past becomes sovereign. Future hope is postponed until the past is fully resolved—which it often never is.

This worldview subtly removes God from the center of the story. Memory becomes something the self must manage, master, and carry—rather than something God redeems and reframes.

Miroslav Volf and the Ethics of Remembrance

In The End of Memory, Miroslav Volf draws from personal experience in the war-torn Balkans. He argues that we should not aim to erase memory—but neither should we be ruled by it. Instead, we should aim to remember rightly.

This means:

• Remembering in ways that promote reconciliation, not revenge.

• Framing memories with love and hope, not hate or fear.

• Allowing God’s final judgment and mercy to shape how we interpret our past.

Volf writes:

This is not about suppressing or spiritualizing trauma. It’s about reinterpreting it in the light of the cross. In Christ, evil is not minimized—but it is defeated. And memory becomes a means of witness rather than a weight of bondage.

Counseling Implications: How We Help People Remember

Counselors who operate from a biblical worldview must walk a fine line: neither dismissing pain nor idolizing it. Our goal is not just catharsis but transformation.

Here are some key distinctions in how we approach memory in biblical counseling:

• Truth > Detail: Full recall is not always necessary for healing. Scripture prioritizes truth over totality. We help counselees distinguish between obsessively reliving an event and faithfully interpreting it.

• God > Self: We shift the story’s center. In trauma narratives, the abuser or the pain often becomes central. We redirect attention to God—what He was doing, what He is doing, and what He promises to do.

• Testimony > Trigger: Memory is reoriented toward mission. We help people move from victimhood to witness, telling stories of God's redemptive power.

• Purpose > Perpetuity: The past is not sovereign. In Christ, it is spoken over. We don’t stay in cycles of therapeutic remembering. We move toward obedience and fruitfulness.

Biblical counseling doesn't erase trauma. It re-narrates it.

Practical Steps: Counseling Toward Right Remembrance

Here are some tangible tools for helping people remember rightly in your counseling sessions:

a) Psalm-Based Journaling

Use Psalms of lament (e.g., Psalm 13, Psalm 77) as a guide. These prayers move through complaint, memory, hope, and praise. They give structure to memory and model honesty with God.

b) Narrative Reframing

Help counselees identify their personal narrative. Who is the main actor in their story? Is God present? Encourage them to rewrite their story with God as the author, not merely an observer.

c) The Lord’s Supper

“Do this in remembrance of Me.” Communion is the sacred rhythm of re-narrating our pain in light of Christ’s sacrifice. Consider incorporating this into group sessions, church counseling nights, or family devotions.

d) Scripture-Led Recall

Ask, “How does God speak to this part of your story?” Rather than merely revisiting pain, we revisit it with the Word. This reshapes the emotional memory.

e) Prayer Through Memory

Encourage counselees to engage in prayerful remembrance by practicing truthful honesty before God. Rather than trying to relive or feel their way through the past, invite them to bring their memories—raw, fragmented, or unclear—to Jesus, acknowledging where they long for healing or clarity.

Praying with Scripture open is a good practice; letting God’s Word interpret their memories rather than their feelings. For example:

• “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted…” (Psalm 34:18)

• “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you…” (Isaiah 26:3)

• “Even though I walk through the valley… you are with me.” (Psalm 23:4)

This is not a technique—it’s a return. A return to the One who holds every moment, sees all things clearly, and invites us to entrust even our memories to Him.

Conclusion: Remembering to Be Made Whole

In Christ, memory does not need to be denied, nor does it need to dominate. We are called to a third way: memory that is redeemed. Memory that becomes a testimony, not a tyrant.

The trauma-informed age offers empathy—but often without eschatology. It can help us understand suffering, but it cannot tell us what suffering means. Only the gospel can do that.

And so we remember—not just the wounds, but the One who was wounded for us. Not just the pain, but the healing. Not just the evil, but the grace that overcame it.

“God will heal our memories when our memories become the place where God’s grace is more real than the wounds we suffered.”
— Miroslav Volf

Amen.