Forgiveness: The time machine that changes the past

Source: The power of repentance: Changing what has already happened

"Great is repentance, for it reaches the Throne of Glory... Great is repentance, for deliberate sins are transformed into merits for him."

"And this is the secret of repentance: The Holy One, blessed be He, expanded the creative power of the soul and spirit in relation to actions and reality, so that it encompasses even the past within its domain."

(Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Yoma 86b; Rabbi Kook, Orot HaTeshuvah 1:5)

Explanation: The moral time machine: When the future changes the past

Many cultures have forgiveness and atonement, not just Judaism, of course. Yet the Talmud presents a radical innovation: not only is a person's sin forgiven, and not only is repentance enough to erase the sin, but repentance actually repairs the sin and turns it into something positive. In physics, time moves forward ('the arrow of time'), whereas repentance, much like history, can act upon the time that has passed and alter it. If someone mends their ways as a result of a sin, that sin becomes the catalyst for good, and so in retrospect the sin is transformed into a "merit." Forgiveness is a time machine: it takes a traumatic event and changes its prior meaning and its impact on the present.

Perspective: Who controls history: The facts or the meaning?

There is a common confusion between history and memory. People assume history is a dry grocery list of facts: the glass broke, the word was spoken. But that isn't how it works. The future interprets the past, casting it in a new light, so that what was wonderful becomes a failure, and what seemed beautiful turns into a nightmare. Memory is what keeps history from petrifying; it provides meaning, and it is completely malleable. The facts are the raw matter, and the meaning is the form. Control over "what happened" was lost the moment the deed was done, but control over "why it happened" and "where it leads us" always remains in the hands of the present. A free person does not fight history; they narrate it.

Going Deeper: The quantum physics of morality: Delayed choice

Quantum physics no longer laughs at this idea. In John Wheeler's famous "delayed-choice" experiment, it was proven at the subatomic level that an observer's decision to make a measurement in the present determines how a particle behaved in the past. The astounding scientific conclusion is that history is not fixed until it is measured. The facts hang suspended in superposition until their meaning is measured. Jewish repentance is the macroscopic version of this experiment. Our moral past is a wave of possibilities, and our choice today to forgive and make amends is the measurement that collapses the past into a new reality of merit instead of debt.

Culture: When the novelist becomes God: Atonement through creation

In the book and film Atonement by Ian McEwan, Briony, the aging novelist, realizes there is no way for her to undo the terrible wrong she mistakenly caused in her childhood. Years later, an elderly and celebrated author, her solution is to write a novel in which she gives the lovers the happy ending they were denied. She uses the creative power of writing to conjure an alternative past. The work raises the question of whether changing the story is a form of forgiveness. McEwan's answer is tragic, yet it echoes the Jewish principle that the only possible repair for lost time is generating new meaning in the present. As she asks herself: "How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God?" (p. 309).