Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more. By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them.
-- Joseph Smith, Doctrine & Covenants 58:42-43
And now, verily I say unto you, I, the Lord, will not lay any sin to your charge; go your ways and sin no more; but unto that soul who sinneth shall the former sins return, saith the Lord your God.
-- Joseph Smith, Doctrine & Covenants 82:7
I know, I know, I said that I would quit
All right, I promise, no more after this
-- They Might Be Giants, "Thunderbird"
We should not even pretend that we 'will do better in future' and will strive to 'cease sinning' because this is not true. We will not do better, nor will we strive to do better; instead we will carry on sinning just as we do now. However, we acknowledge and repent this.
-- Bruce Charlton, "Repenting our compelled obedience to Caesar"
Let's talk about something serious for a change.
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Back when I was a church-Mormon, my understanding of repentance was that implied by the two D&C passages quoted above. Provided I confessed my sin, worked up an adequate degree of sincere sorrow over it, and never did it again, God would forgive me. But if I did do it again, the repentance was null and void and I was back to square one.
It's easy to see the logic behind this view. After all, if you say you repent but don't actually change your life, how exactly is that repentance? The prodigal son quit his riotous living and returned home -- and if he hadn't, that wouldn't have been repentance. What could be more blasphemous than saying Ave Deus, peccaturi te salutant! ("Hail, God, those who are about to sin salute you!") and then going about your business as before? That's not repentance. Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?
Looked at with a cold eye, though, the D&C model of repentance (meaning the one implied by those verses; I don't presume to call it "the" Mormon model) is grossly inadequate. It promises forgiveness only for past sins. It says that provided you become morally perfect (forsake all your sins), God will forgive you for not having been morally perfect in the past. Not exactly reassuring! If that's how it is, we're all damned.
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Which leads us to the Thunderbird model of repentance. (Thunderbird is a kind of cheap wine; the TMBG song is about alcoholism.) God will forgive you only if you "go your way and sin no more" -- but of course you know that, being human, you're going to sin again. But that's okay; you just repent again. Forsaking all your sins is easy; I've done it hundreds of times!
But of course each repentance -- each act of supposedly forsaking your sins forever -- has to be sincere. At the moment of repentance, you can't be thinking that you're probably going to do it again tomorrow; you have to make yourself believe that you've really changed your life for good. Baby, please, I know what I said before, but this time's gonna be different, I swear!
In other words, you have to lie to yourself and lie to God.
Some people will advocate the "fake it till you make it" approach. -- keep on pretending to change your life, trying as hard as possible to fool even yourself, and one of these days it just might really happen! However, to my mind, any moral gains acquired by this method would be more than offset by the habits of self-deception and bad faith that would come with them.
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Finally, there is Bruce Charlton's model. The context is that of sin which is "compelled" by the powers that be -- but not really compelled. What we are literally compelled to do, such that there is no possibility of doing otherwise, cannot even be considered a sin. He is talking about sinful actions which could in principle be resisted -- but only by "heroes of faith," which most of us are not. In other words, the context of government "compulsion" is not really central to his point. All mortals are in a similar situation: We could in principle resist every temptation to sin but in fact are not virtuous enough to do so.
Bruce's idea is that you can know that you're not going to do better -- know that you're not even going to try to do better -- and yet still repent. What can repentance mean if it doesn't mean even trying to change? Basically, it means confessing -- acknowledging that your sins are sins, not making excuses for yourself or trying to kid yourself into thinking that what you're doing is actually right.
Is that really repentance, though? Isn't it just Ave Deus, peccaturi te salutant? Saying "I know this is a sin, but I intend to keep doing it anyway" -- isn't that almost the definition of being un-repentant, of openly and deliberately defying God?
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I don't have any good solutions here. We all sin, and the reason we don't stop is, ultimately, that we don't want to stop -- or don't want it enough, want other things more. How are repentance and forgiveness possible, and what do they mean, for such creatures as ourselves?
3 comments:
Overall, I think the Bruce Charlton model is the best...
To answer your points requires recognising that repentance is a means to an end, and that end is following Jesus to resurrected life everlasting in Heaven. Doing this requires first wanting to do it, and secondly 'consenting' to being 'cleansed' of that which makes us unfit for Heaven and unable to function there: i.e. sin. Repentance is the recognition that we need 'cleansing' and our consent to this happening. That is all that 'we' have to do (or can do).
To put it more positively, Heaven requires a permanent commitment to work *with* God on the project of loving creation. We cannot do this work unless our wills are permanently aligned with God (we must want, what God wants).
The reasons we can only partially and briefly work with God duing this mortal life, is that our intentions are not usually (but only briefly) aligned with God - and That is because we are here to learn; we are not here to be perfect.
So, that too is an important aspect of understanding repentance - the recognition that the world is not engineered to allow perfection, and neither are we; and therefore imperfection is not a problem. It is part of the design - but only if properly responded to.
Indeed, mortal life would be completely useless if it was perfect - if that was the case we might as well go straight to Heaven and forgot mucking-about in mortality.
The real problem is Not Learning from our experiences in this mortal life - including from the inevitable sins and failures; because that learning is what we are here for.
Another aspect is that we must not regard psychology as the bottom line. Your explanations of repentance are too naturalistic, as if the psychological level was all that was to be said.
Instead, we must be able to learn from this life, in a way that transcends psychology - transcends disease, disaster, dementia, death etc. i.e. Transcends the mortal condition (dominated by change, by decay and death - by entropy).
In sum - when it comes to repentance; the bottom line is not this life - but the next: specifically resurrected life in Heaven.
And if Heaven in not wanted by someone, then this life has no point for him, including that repentance (for him) has no value or meaning.
Repentance is For Christians.
I like the Bruce Charlton model myself. To think of sin and repentance so transactionally seems wrong. Repentance to me is always at it's heart a sincere alignment and turning toward God— Not "here's a list of bad things. I'll need your signature on the bottom." It's important to discern as best you can your good actions and attitudes from evil ones and lists can be helpful, but if it's not sincere than heaven is not what you're after anyway.
I do think we can sincerely repent while we continue to sin when we are overcome by demons and/or mortal weakness. When we start to defend our sins, that is the great danger.
The only criticism I might have for Dr. Charlton’s model is that it sounds like, or could easily transgress into, a major flaw with liberal Christianity.
As Pope Francis often says “meet people where they are” as an excuse to try and normalize adulterous and other sinful situations - where the people have no intention of changing - and can now receive communion despite engaging in and having no intention of amending their situation.
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