For its Bible study, my church is going through The Easter Experience: What If What Happened Then Changes Everything Now?
The topic of last night’s lesson was regret vs. repentance. Judas
regretted betraying Jesus, and he tried to make up for what he did by
returning the pieces of silver that he got for the betrayal. But he
could not undo what he had done, and he felt a great deal of guilt.
Consequently, he killed himself. (Or so says Matthew’s Gospel. The
Book of Acts appears to tell a different story!)
Peter also betrayed Jesus in that he denied him three times, but he
did not try to make up for his sin all by himself. Rather, he came to
Jesus, and Jesus forgave and restored him, as well as gave him a
mission: to feed Jesus’ sheep. The pastor on the DVD that we watched
told a story about a college student who majored in partying, and his
grades and Christian walk were really suffering. He called his parents,
and they told him to come home. The pastor was saying that this is
what repentance is: it’s coming home. We’re going home to the God who
welcomes us, loves us, and made us.
This was a slightly different understanding of repentance from what I
have gotten in the past. Repentance has often been presented to me as
changing the course in which one lives his or her life: a person stops
sinning and starts doing good. In the Hebrew, the word for repentance
is teshuvah, which means to turn. But the lesson last night
made me think that perhaps I should not see repentance as me pulling
myself up by my bootstraps and getting my life in order. Rather, it is
me turning to God. It is me coming home. A righteous life accompanies
that, granted, but I like seeing repentance in more of a relational
sense.
The lesson asked why many people try to fix their own problems after
making a mistake rather than turning to Jesus. I did not speak up in
group, but I think that one reason is that we believe that receiving
God’s forgiveness somehow trivializes the evil of what we did. We feel
that we have to take care of the problem, and that this is better than
us just going around blithely thinking that God has forgiven us. There
are plenty of people who have caused damage to others, yet they walk
around feeling good because they believe that God has forgiven them.
Does that trivialize their evil? Forgiveness does not have to be seen
as something cheap, however. Christianity states that it came at the
cost of Jesus’ life. In the area of interpersonal relationships, there
are things that people can do to make restitution: they can pay back
what they owe, they can apologize, or they can take steps not to repeat
the offending behavior.
Another consideration: There are times when I do something
wrong—-say, I lose my temper and tell someone off—-and I feel guilty
when I come into God’s presence. That may be a reason that people try
to fix their own problems after making a mistake rather than going to
Jesus: they feel guilty and inadequate to enter God’s presence. I knew a
couple, and they ordinarily prayed before meals. When they got into a
fight and were about to eat a meal, however, they skipped the prayer
part. They may have felt that they could not contaminate the purity of a
religious act with their own flaws, that to do so would be hypocrisy on
their part. I do not think that such guilt is entirely bad: there are
Scriptures about how sins can hinder our prayers. At the same time, I
believe it is important that I see God as my ally, not my enemy. God is
rooting for me in the sense that God wants me to get back up and try
again. God is there to support and to restore me. So, if I tell
someone off, I can come to God afterwards, and he will love me and
forgive me. But that should not be an excuse for me to avoid offering
the person I told off an apology!