With apologies to the Beatles (or maybe just Paul McCartney), I don’t believe in Yesterday.
The song by that name is wistfully lovely and immensely popular (according to the Guinness Book of Records — and they should know — it’s the most covered pop song of all time) but it makes for lousy theology and even worse day-to-day spirituality.
But this is not a critique of the song (I am, indeed, very fond of it), Mr McCartney, or any music for that matter. It’s a commentary on how some of us choose to live our lives — or not live them, as the case may be.
It’s discouraging, to say nothing of embarrassing, to go to confession month after month and basically repeat the same inventory of sins.
I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Indeed, some people become so embarrassed and discouraged that they think the solution is to stop going to confession and resign themselves to their bad habits.
This is not a good idea, but this column really isn’t about the importance of confession either.
The other day my confessor said something that was blatantly self-evident, which only goes to show how sin blinds you, because I certainly needed reminding of it: yesterday is gone.
In life, spiritual or otherwise, you’ve only got the future — starting, of course, with this moment, followed by the next ten minutes. And so on.
Yet why do so many of us want to dwell in or on the past?
Looking back can be enjoyable, heart-warming, comforting. It’s called nostalgia, and we all like to indulge from time to time.
But it becomes counterproductive if we try to spend all our time there or it makes us feel overwhelmed and bitter at ‘how times have changed’.
Whether one hews philosophically to Bob Dylan or Ecclesiastes 1:9, they’re both correct in this apparent paradox: the times they are a changing, but there’s nothing new under the sun.
Some of us go beyond lamenting the past: we try (vainly) to recapture it. Good luck with that.
Do I need to point out how ridiculous it looks for an elderly man (or woman; let’s be fair) to drive a flashy new sports car and try to dress and act like a 20-something? People (not just women) spend billions on cosmetic surgeries, creams and injections — but Honey, that face (and tummy) will never be the same. Get over it.
Then there’s nostalgia’s flipside: regret. It’s ironic that sometimes we take a bad memory (something we should prefer to forget) and keep flogging ourselves with it.
We rehash past sins, poor choices and mistakes we made in life. Some poor souls become so consumed with regret about yesterday that it paralyses them today.
It’s tragic that the notion “I’ve wasted my whole life up to this point” somehow becomes a justification to go on wasting the present moment.
Recalling our past sins (once we’ve confessed them) should only serve as impetus for moving beyond them and into God’s will for my life right now.
God forgets yesterday; so should we. He is the God of all time, but he is eternally present. Isaiah 44:22 declares:
“I have dispelled your acts of revolt like a cloud and your sins like a mist. Come back to me, for I have redeemed you” (Jerusalem Bible).
“Have dispelled”: the grammarian in me notes the past participle (not “will sweep” as one overworked 70s pop-hymn suggests).
When we repent of our sin (and receive absolution), it’s done and gone.
Without sounding too alarmist, might I suggest that ‘yesterday’ is the devil’s domain. He is the debilitating force behind “same-old, same-old”.
It is he who lives there (having no hope and therefore no future to anticipate), constantly berating us with our past sins—even when the past is just five minutes ago.
“You’ve blown it today; what’s the point of trying? You’re hopeless. You’ll never change.”
Don’t listen. God is waiting to make all things new, starting now.
Never mind yesterday and its troubles: it’s God’s immeasurable grace that is, as Sir Paul would sing, ‘here to stay’.
Oh, I believe I can move beyond Yesterday.