Repentance
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of Eugene Peterson’s, A Long Obedience, pp. 30-31
The usual biblical word describing the no we say to the world’s lies and the yes we say to God’s truth is repentance. It is always and everywhere the first word in the Christian life…
Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you were wrong in thinking that you had, or could get, the strength, education and training to make it on your own; it is deciding that you have been told a pack of lies about yourself and your neighbors and your world. And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth. Repentance is a realization that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts. Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace.
Repentance is the most practical of all words and the most practical of all acts. It is a feet-on-the-ground kind of word. It puts a person in touch with reality that God creates.
This description really makes repentance something concrete to me.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Perhaps this sheds light on why the idea of repentance feels so offensive to non-Christians: it is the act of admitting that you’re not God, as Peterson so eloquently puts it. To tell someone they must repent (not to us, of course), is to tell them to admit they’re not God, or even god. The challenge becomes, how do we tell them in a way that they understand we’re not spiteful of them (their lifestyle), or perhaps even jealous (having failed at being god ourselves, we’ve come up with a way to ensure no one else will be either). Hmm.