Can the past be changed?
My heart was heavy as I pondered a decision I needed to make—heavy because it involved an unpleasant memory.
I once heard it said that even God can’t change the past. But is that true? In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, asks, “What cannot God do?” (p. 135).
The past is a subject that humanity persistently struggles with and ruminates about. Wrongs done by us or by others, regrets, lost opportunities, and injustices make up the fabric of a human past that can plague us incessantly. But are these memories telling the whole story—or even the true story? Does a past experience actually exist as fact, or is it a human perception? Mrs. Eddy counsels, “It is well to know, dear reader, that our material, mortal history is but the record of dreams, not of man’s real existence, and the dream has no place in the Science of being” (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 21).
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