I’ve had a lot to say about repentance in the past, and ‘tis the season to say a little more. Since repentance is one of the essential elements of the Christian life, it’s hard to exhaust all that can be said about it. We already know that repentance is more than just feeling sorry for our sins, and more than just words of remorse or confession. We also know that it is about changing one’s way of thinking and living, embracing a new direction that is more perfectly focused on God, his commandments, his invitation to holiness, his loving-kindness and mercy.
But there is more still. Repentance is not just about us, our sins, and the direction of our inner lives. Repentance is about God, too, and about his response to our response to his invitation! We perhaps aren’t sufficiently aware of what it means to God that we repent of our sins and change our lives. Perhaps we also aren’t aware of how impatiently (if I can use that term in God’s case) He waits for us simply to recognize our guilt, admit it, and enter into the joy of our Lord.
You have probably read in the Gospels that there is great joy in Heaven over the repentance of a single sinner. We aren’t given an indication as to just how God rejoices over a repentant sinner (except perhaps for the image of the banquet celebrated by the Father of the prodigal son). But how about this: “Rejoice and exult with all your heart… The Lord has taken away the judgments against you… The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear evil no more… the Lord your God is in your midst… He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will renew you in his love; He will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. ‘I will remove disaster from you [says the Lord], so that you will not bear reproach for it… I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown… when I restore your fortunes before your eyes,’ says the Lord” (Zephaniah 3:14-20). That is how the Lord feels about your repentance; that is how glad it will make Him to make you glad! He rejoices over us with “loud singing” when we return to Him. Did you ever think of God’s joyful voice echoing throughout the universe and commanding the stars to dance just because you repented of your sins?
Before we get too ecstatic, however, we need a little sober reflection. We have to realize that sin is the one and only obstacle to our eternal happiness. And it is a major obstacle, the obstacle, the one that can forever plunge an immortal soul into the suffocating pit of black fire and endless howls of hatred, where all joy has fled and where the bitterest of sorrow and pain flood every soul with the sickening awareness that all is now irrevocably lost. Christ descended into netherworld of the dead when He bore all our sins upon Himself, so that we wouldn’t inevitably have to reap the bitter harvest of our wrongdoing. He bore the weight of sin and death and thus disarmed them, so that we would find the way out of our wickedness and all its consequences and be safely delivered into the Kingdom of light and joy.
Between the endless rejoicing and jubilant celebrations of the citizens of Heaven, and the crushing, painful despair of the damned in Hell, stands repentance. That is what decides which will be our everlasting abode. Therefore it is critical that we embrace it without delay, and the Lord anxiously sends us his grace and his angels to help us see what we desperately need to see. For He deeply desires that we end up on the side of joy.I have occasionally noticed a curious phenomenon in the confessional: people refuse to admit their sins even there! There is the fairly common avoidance technique of confessing other people’s sins, I suppose as the justification for their negative reactions to them, but the confession ends up being a kind of protracted self-defense. I’m not surprised at all if nothing subsequently changes in their lives, because they haven’t really repented and opened themselves up to the grace needed for humility and the necessary practical changes. Others seem to have such a poorly developed conscience that they are unable to recognize their sins. If they haven’t committed murder or grand larceny, they think all is fine. Sometimes I’ve asked people if they regularly go to confession, and I’ve occasionally heard this: “But why should I? I don’t do anything wrong!” Yet the saints have gone to confession weekly or daily. Imagine, practically everyone today is holier than the saints!
With others the problem seems to go deeper. Sometimes people have some sort of inner blockage as far as recognizing and admitting their own sins. They make excuses for themselves; they say (in effect) that the devil made them do it, and they end up giving this impression: some unfortunate things happened, but it wasn’t their fault. Sometimes I’ve really had to wrestle with them (if I would give them absolution), to enable them to admit they were personally guilty of something and not just the innocent victims of endless circumstances beyond their control. But alas, they would sometimes still walk away untouched by grace, for they had not repented of their sins. It seems that perhaps there is some deep-rooted psychological fear that prevents them from explicitly admitting that they have committed sin.
The psychological dimension of sin has been treated in some detail in M. Scott Peck’s fascinating study, People of the Lie. He is a Christian psychiatrist, and he conducted a study of the mystery of evil from a psychological perspective. It is clear that such a study cannot exhaust the universal and complex reality of human sin, but it does offer some helpful insights. I will quote a bit from the book here, describing a few essential elements of a profile of the “people of the lie.” They are usually highly egocentric and will go to great lengths to protect their polished external self-image, yet they live in terror of being exposed for who they really are. But little by little, lie by lie, they begin to believe their own deceptions until it becomes a complete self-deception from which only a miracle can liberate them. They are (unfortunately) often found among religious people, because religion provides a façade of respectability, and they will strike out viciously at anyone who dares pierce the veneer of their sham righteousness.
You will see from the following quotes why it is very difficult (and tragically so) for such people to repent:
“The central defect of the evil is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it… As life often threatens their image of self-perfection, they are often busily engaged in hating and destroying that life—usually in the name of righteousness… [their] behavior is totally dictated by an extreme form of self-protectiveness which invariably sacrifices others rather than themselves… The essential component of evil is not the absence of a sense of sin or imperfection but the unwillingness to tolerate that sense. At one and the same time, the evil are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness… they are continually engaged in sweeping the evidence of their evil under the rug of their own consciousness… We become evil by attempting to hide from ourselves… Evil may be recognized by its very disguise… We see the smile that hides the hatred, the smooth and oily manner that masks the fury… The disguise is usually impenetrable… they are likely to exert themselves more than most in their continuing effort to obtain and maintain an image of high respectability…
“Malignant narcissism [that is how the author describes sin] is characterized by an unsubmitted will… In the conflict between their guilt and their will, it is the guilt that must go and the will that must win…They are men…of obviously strong will, determined to have their own way. There is a remarkable power in the manner in which they attempt to control others… The highly narcissistic (evil) individual will strike out to destroy whoever challenges his or her self-image of perfection…”
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