By David Hegg
Remember when you were a child and acted disrespectfully to your Grammy? Remember when you stole that packet of gum from the corner market? Remember when you sassed your mother or got caught lying to your fifth-grade teacher? And do you remember what your parents did in every case? They insisted that you admit your behavior, apologize to those you wronged, and promise never to repeat that behavior. You had to say “sorry” to your Grammy, humbly return the gum to the store manager, apologize to your mother, and admit your duplicity to your teacher.
Why? In civil society, wrongdoing needs to be corrected, and the heart of the wrongdoer must be confronted and cleansed. They need to admit their transgression, apologize for it without excuse, state their intention never to engage in that behavior again, and promise to think and act honorably. In other words, they need to repent!
When met with forgiveness, repentance restores relationships and, more importantly, trust. But it must be a complete admission of guilt, not a minimal, excuse-laden attempt to rationalize some or all of the offense.
There is an old saying: “Don’t cut your leg off an inch at a time!” In business, it advises us to deal with challenges decisively rather than end up hurting incrementally. In personal relationships, many offenders attempt to minimize their wrongdoing by confessing only to the most recent expression of it. Think of the professor who gets caught “upsizing” his research credentials. Instead of coming clean to other forms of academic dishonesty, he admits to being careless in updating his curricula vitae. But sooner or later, when he is found out, he’ll wish he’d been fully honest the first time. By trying to minimize his humiliation, he forever lost the trust of his students, peers and institution. Complete, uncoerced repentance, while humiliating at first, is essential to restore trust.
Why am I writing this? Because we have a front-row seat today on the erosion of integrity in our society when it comes to admitting wrongdoing. When did we last hear a politician admit to lying? When did we last see a leader come forward confessing sinful actions before being outed? When did an elected official have a press conference to tell us the program they developed, supported with glowing claims, pushed through the legislative process, and passed into law didn’t work as promised and hurt the people they represented? And I could just as well speak about my area of church leadership. It seems that every week, some pastor somewhere is outed for financial or sexual impropriety. What has happened to our integrity, self-control, and, even more importantly, our responsibility to God and our country?
What we’re missing is leadership honesty in every arena of life. Hypocrisy, especially among those we need to trust, has become so common that we too often scoff and say, “What did we expect?” Frankly, we, the people, need to expect more. We deserve honesty when those who are supposed to be doing right are found to be doing wrong.
Repentance, the acknowledgment of wrong combined with a promise to do right, is essential to protecting, maintaining and rebuilding a foundational element in a healthy society: trust!
But there is also a more personal reason for repentance. Repentance is a gift we give ourselves when we act sinfully and hurt others. If wrongdoing is not acknowledged and confessed, it remains in the heart as a hardening agent. Over time, motives and actions once understood as detrimental to others no longer prick the conscience, making it easier and easier to pursue even greater hurtful, even criminal acts.
All around us, we see this happening. Those unwilling to admit that they’ve done wrong end up believing they’ve done good, and they come up with clever titles, phrases and elitist propaganda to make the rest of us think we must be wrong in our assessments. Perhaps the most egregious example of this was the way the Democratic National Convention crowd cheered the abortions performed in the nearby Planned Parenthood mobile abortion clinic. Two people went in, in each case, and only one came out.
Trying to make evil look good isn’t just a 21st-century phenomenon. Around 720 BC, the biblical prophet Isaiah told the truth about those who know what they’re doing is wrong but have believed the lies they tell themselves. He warned his people, and his warning is still valid:
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
— Isaiah 5:20.
Local resident David Hegg is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church. “Ethically Speaking” appears Sundays.
