Repentance

This blog was a journal entry Michael Miller found recently that he wrote many years ago but that continues to be pertinent to him today and offers us all a different perspective on what repentance really means.

I am sitting in a mostly empty plane coming into Denver. Jeanette is flying back from Aberdeen with Maia, and I am going to meet her and surprise her and help with the baby and luggage. I have been thinking lately about sins that are committed repeatedly. We all have addictions, or bad habits that we do again and again. Now matter how many times we repent, we end up blowing it again. No matter how many times I feel terrible about it, and resolve to do better, I end up being critical of my wife once again. Or jokingly antagonistic. Or poutingly selfish. Or fill in the blank. I know that when I sin, I need to apologize, ask God for forgiveness, and that He will help me not to do it again. The trouble is, I need this to be genuine, and not just some formulaic incantation I recite so I can get what I want again. When I do a random act of sin it isn't too difficult to feel genuinely sorrowful, to repent, and to genuinely turn away and choose never to do this again. But when it is the same act I've committed over and over again, well, it's hard to convince myself that I'm actually repentant when I've been in this same situation for this same sin myriads of times before, repented, then like a dog to my vomit, said the most harshly critical thing to my wife yet again. I'm suspicious of my intention to not sin again. I like sin, and this repentance seems a bit too timely-- I'm confessing again after it's all done, yet have not bothered to keep my mouth shut and say nothing when I'm about to criticize.

So here I sit in this plane, thinking. I've been avoiding God, because I know there is something between us that needs to be addressed. I've given in to sin, and it is hard to confess because I don't know how to make it genuine when I've said the same thing thousands of times before and am here needing to do so again. On this plane I have my journal, a water bottle, and JP Moreland's book "The God Question." I brought nothing else. I brought the book because besides being the best book I read in 2009 (this book is incredible!) I remember that what he said about confession struck me when I first read it, though I forget what he said.

Turning to p168, I re-read:"For years, I practiced a self-destructive approach to confession: If you do something wrong, you confess it as soon as you recognize what you did. This cleanses you afresh, and then you can enter into God's presence again." Hmm... this is exactly my approach to confession. I view my sin as separating me from God, and that I cannot get close to Him until I confess it and repent.

Continuing: "This approach has two problems. For one thing, you subtly come to believe that your confession-- for example, how earnest you were this time, how much you really felt sorry, how ready you were to acknowledge it, how well you have done since the last time you confessed something like this-- earns you the right to walk with God again. This is deeply harmful. For another thing, you form the habit of giving a surface treatment of what is causing you to sin and what is going on in your heart. As a result, you are more likely to engage in the sin repeatedly."

Moreland has perfectly described how I've been confessing my whole life! When I talk about being genuine, what I mean is that I am trying to feel earnest in my confession... and therefore to earn my 'rightness' with God again. If I am honest, I also do not view sin as being as bad as it is. This is because I know in the back of my mind that I have the 'magical' blood of Christ to make everything good between us. This sounds crass and sacrilegious, and it is, but refusing to admit to the view does not make it any less true of me.

And then I come to the true gem of this passage: "By contrast, here is a more helpful approach. When you sin against God and become aware of it, you immediately run to Him and invite Him into your situation. You immediately ask Him to search your heart and show you what is going on in the depths of your soul." He goes on to say you then agree with Him about what you see.

So sitting there on that plane, I invited God into the mess of my bad habits, and I asked Him to show me what was going on in the depths of my soul. I've asked God to help me express what happened next, because I want to get this experience across. Suddenly, I felt a Presence diving down into me, and baring the depths of my soul. I can't explain how I knew this; there were no thoughts in my head, no words describing to me the little, petty life I was living, just a heaviness pressing in on me. I was all shortness of breath and tears. As I finished my prayer I managed to reach up and turn off my reading light before I was overcome. Then I sat there, plunged in darkness, in a tiny, dark, silent plane looking out my window at the dark earth below. There was no one in my row, nor in the rows around me. And I sat there, hot tears streaming down my face, hands clenched and unclenched, my mouth tightened into the wide grimace of a silent cry, occasionally letting my head fall into my hands, my brow tight and furrowed, breathing heavily, feeling heavy, and feeling Someone inside me, examining me and cleansing me. There, in that darkness, a tiny dot hurtling across the night sky, I discovered and agreed with God about what He found in me. And I finally repented. I was undone. And I felt whole.

Eventually the Searching went away, and instead calmly nestled inside me. And as we descended into Denver, I felt nothing but peace.