Repentance is not a restart -- it is not a do-over in which we go back to square one, act as if we did not make a mistake, and get a second chance to get it right. Repentance does not gloss over or ignore the consequences of our actions but enables us to face them head on. Repentance is the way we confront our failure -- not a way around it. It is only by owning the sin that the sinner can be pointed to grace. Naturally, this is the work of the Spirit and not our own good character and I do not wish to give the impression that repentance is our work -- it is always the fruit of the Spirit at work in the Word and Sacraments.
I fear a world in which repentance is equated with a do-over or restart. It will lead us even further away from the blessed fruit of repentance in which we have no place to go but the arms of our Savior, whose grace is the only power that can disarm the failed thoughts, words, and deeds of our sins. The do-over mentality leads to the false and damaging idea that we keep getting second chances to get it right until we win. In contrast to this, genuine repentance is the Spirit working in us to know and accept that we can never get it right. The entrance into God's kingdom comes not with ringing bells and victory images of a win but the warning sounds of "game over" and the admission that only Christ won. The miracle of grace leads us to see that He won not for Him but for us, and not for a second chance but for eternal redemption.
In addition, other lessons of the video games have taught us to cheer for the one who lives life on the edge, who cuts corners, who knows the cheat codes, and who bend the rules. Now, to be fair, this is also the lesson we learn from media figures who screw up so you cannot lay all the fault at the video console. But the images we get from the games and the media coverage of fallen celebs is the same. Nobody plays by the rules. If you can't win by doing what is honorable, then you can win by bending the rules or cheating a little here and there. Everybody gets a do-over. The most fun is living on the edge -- the edge of safety, the edge of morality, and the edge of getting caught.
As I have repeatedly stated, I am not a Luddite. I am not suggesting that we cash out of our techno age. But I think we need to be aware of some of the unintended consequences of the world in which our children are growing up and in which most young adults live. Without a deliberate and equally weighted counter balance to the world of do-overs and cutting the corners, youth and the young have a distorted view of reality which makes faith less important and masks the real and harmful risks to them, to their lives, to their real happiness, and to their eternity... Something every parent who is purchasing a video game this Christmas might well want to ponder...
7 comments:
Thank you Rev Peters, very well said. As retired Air Force pilot, I often describe our repentance as "doing a 360 degree and getting the heck out of here." Of course, that leaves us going in the same direction.
Request permission to use this in a newsletter article later in 2011.
Thanks.
Ultimately, repentance is turning
away from sin and turning toward God.
This is a daily process which the
Holy Spirit empowers in the heart of
a Christian.
Could it be that part of our problem with repentance lies in the fact that Scripture and our Confessions use the word “repentance” with two distinct meanings. The first is the true “turning around” (μετάνοια) of the sinner when, by the grace and gift of God he becomes a child of God and a member of His Kingdom. This happens only once, and if we were to “repent” after that, we would, as the pilot commentator (Rev. af col) wrote, turn back to where we started from. This is a “restart” in the sense that the old creature is drowned and dies in the waters of baptism, and the new creature rises to new life in the Kingdom of God, filled with the Holy Spirit.
The second meaning of repentance is the daily contrition which a child of God experiences because that child deeply regrets that it continues to sin. But inasmuch as “we are God’s children now”, we know that for the rest of our lives on earth we will be “simul justus et peccator”. Therefore this repentance is not a repentance of despair, as the first one, but of gratitude, confidence and trust in the promises of our heavenly Father, Who knows how to give good gifts to His children.
Frequently these two types of repentance are discussed as if there is no difference between them. Among Lutheran English speakers this is encouraged by an inaccurate translation of the German word “währt” in the Smalcald Articles and the Formula of Concord, which read, “And in Christians this repentance (meaning the first kind, (μετάνοια) GAM) continues until death,…” The meaning of the German is that the “effect” of “this repentance” continues until death, not the repentance itself. One could say, “This repentance is good for the rest of your life.” But it does not exclude the second, the daily repentance, or contrition.
Peace and Joy!
George A. Marquart
It is a sad thing that it is not just our secular, video, celeb age. It is high-profile evangelicals (like Rick Warren's "mulligan")who add to the mess.
When the Church (so called) disposes of the need for repentance, we are truly poor.
Could it be that part of our problem with repentance lies in the fact that Scripture and our Confessions use the word “repentance” with two distinct meanings. The first is the true “turning around” (μετάνοια) of the sinner when, by the grace and gift of God he becomes a child of God and a member of His Kingdom. This happens only once, and if we were to “repent” after that, we would, as the pilot commentator (Rev. af col) wrote, turn back to where we started from. This is a “restart” in the sense that the old creature is drowned and dies in the waters of baptism, and the new creature rises to new life in the Kingdom of God, filled with the Holy Spirit.
The second meaning of repentance is the daily contrition which a child of God experiences because that child deeply regrets that it continues to sin. But inasmuch as “we are God’s children now”, we know that for the rest of our lives on earth we will be “simul justus et peccator”. Therefore this repentance is not a repentance of despair, as the first one, but of gratitude, confidence and trust in the promises of our heavenly Father, Who knows how to give good gifts to His children.
Frequently these two types of repentance are discussed as if there is no difference between them. Among Lutheran English speakers this is encouraged by an inaccurate translation of the German word “währt” in the Smalcald Articles and the Formula of Concord, which read, “And in Christians this repentance (meaning the first kind, (μετάνοια) GAM) continues until death,…” The meaning of the German is that the “effect” of “this repentance” continues until death, not the repentance itself. One could say, “This repentance is good for the rest of your life.” But it does not exclude the second, the daily repentance, or contrition.
Peace and Joy!
George A. Marquart
It was Robert Schuller of the Hour
of Power and Crystal Cathedral who
said that he did not like the word
"sin" because there is some good in
everyone. He promoted the power of
positive thinking which he inherited
from Norman Vincent Peale. Schuller
felt the word "sin" was too negative
to be preached from his pulpit and
so he never used that word. Now
his morally bankrupt ministry is
facing financial bankruptcy.
Could it be that part of our problem with repentance lies in the fact that Scripture and our Confessions use the word “repentance” with two distinct meanings. The first is the true “turning around” (μετάνοια) of the sinner when, by the grace and gift of God he becomes a child of God and a member of His Kingdom. This happens only once, and if we were to “repent” after that, we would, as the pilot commentator (Rev. af col) wrote, turn back to where we started from. This is a “restart” in the sense that the old creature is drowned and dies in the waters of baptism, and the new creature rises to new life in the Kingdom of God, filled with the Holy Spirit.
The second meaning of repentance is the daily contrition which a child of God experiences because that child deeply regrets that it continues to sin. But inasmuch as “we are God’s children now”, we know that for the rest of our lives on earth we will be “simul justus et peccator”. Therefore this repentance is not a repentance of despair, as the first one, but of gratitude, confidence and trust in the promises of our heavenly Father, Who knows how to give good gifts to His children.
Frequently these two types of repentance are discussed as if there is no difference between them. Among Lutheran English speakers this is encouraged by an inaccurate translation of the German word “währt” in the Smalcald Articles and the Formula of Concord, which read, “And in Christians this repentance (meaning the first kind, (μετάνοια) GAM) continues until death,…” The meaning of the German is that the “effect” of “this repentance” continues until death, not the repentance itself. One could say, “This repentance is good for the rest of your life.” But it does not exclude the second, the daily repentance, or contrition.
Peace and Joy!
George A. Marquart
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