Why Should Man Repent, And Other Questions
In retrospect, I thought this response was rather insightful, even for myself. I learnt many things along this journey of answer these sets of questions posed by a reader in one of my blog post. I post it in hope that it may be useful to you guys as well.
Soham Das-
Hi! Thank you very much for commenting and reading… First time seeing u around! I’m sorry I took so long coz I wanted to mull over some of the question that you have given so as to give you my best possible answer that I can gather from my (very) limited understanding of God and His works.
1. Why should a man repent?
Well, as Christians look at this from an eternal point of view, the reason to repent would be quite obvious. Let’s not even pull heaven or hell into the picture as of yet. If you were given chance to spend eternity with a person, would you do it with one that is constantly repenting in the course of eternity, or the unrepentant one? For even a saintly man who is unrepentant of the smallest things will slowly deteriorate into a monster when you stretch his existence over the span of eternity.
S
To give you an analogy, I would compare this to a mathematics graph, where we plot this into a time (x-axis) over character (y-axis) graph. Repentance in this case would be the change of gradient, from negative to positive. No matter where you may be plotted along the moral character, from the +1000 of Mother Teresa to the -1000 of Osama Bin Laden, if your gradient is a -2 of unrepentantance, whatever positive value you have would not remain positive for long eventually if you extrapolate the graph along the eternal timeline. On the other hand, even if you are at the infinite depths of the moral graph, even Satan: If he was to repent, even with a pathetic gradient of +0.1, given the eternal time span, he would eventually be restored to the glory of a saintly being. Hence repentance is important, and its reason is obvious, only when you view it in light of eternity.
2. If he has indeed done something wrong, then isn’t he repaid back in kind, due to the fallout of his own actions, right here, right now (I mean here and now as earth and a lifetime), then why is God bent on sending him to damnation?
This one is much simpler. I would say this is the double edged sword of delayed accounting. Then again, delayed accounting has to be here in the first place because of love. Why would you put your 5 year old kid to a drive test when you know he would fail? Love asks of you to wait in such cases. And I believe that is exactly what God is doing.
3. If God created us, and he loves us then would He intend to correct us by showing his power or by making us realize that our actions are paid to us in the same coin.
I believe this is a statement you are making with regards to question 2? Do clarify with me in any way if I misinterpreted your questions. Thanks for taking your time to read!
Hi Zachary,
Thanks for being patient with me. I would like to ask you with respect to humanity, there is a difference between repentance of a mistake and realization of that mistake.
When one does realize that realization and humility to accept that even we can make a mistake, the strength to accept whatever comes our way as a fallout of that mistake, only then can we lead a life worth emulating. Dont you think repentance, enduring and eternal stops a man from doing something good for himself, his near and dear ones, his society and the entire mankind? Do you really believe repentance can lead to a better tomorrow? After all repentance cant change tomorrow…but acceptance can equip us better to handle tomorrow, because we will be on our guard to repeat the same mistake. Repentance can perhaps give a similar effect but definitely wont be productive.
Think about it…
I may not be able to make it clear, but come to think of it.
What I believe is repentance is a weak thing to do. Accepting our own mistakes and bearing our own crosses with our head held high is the path to a better life.
Did we humans made a mistake so high to be born as humans?
Acts 26:20
First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.
I believe just as any promise should be followed through with action, repentance is the same as well. After all what good is asking God for forgiveness and then nonchalently repeats the same mistake without any intention to change?
I’d say realisation comes before the choice of repentance, where there’ll be the follow through actions of accepting whatever had gone wrong and ‘be on our guard to repeat the same mistake’.
Hi anoy and Soham,
I believe the 3 of us both hold the same view but we expressed it differently with different technical terms.
True repentence is not just a quickly muttered apology or a “sorry” said to God. True repentence would be
(1) to admit the mistake
(2) turn from it, and do the right thing.
Hence with regards to soham, yes… “Accepting our own mistakes and bearing our own crosses with our head held high is the path to a better life.” but first, to change our wrong doings, we must first admit that they are in the first place, wrong. That is the 1st part of repentance that i mentioned. And i believe this is what anoy is meant as well.
Well, after all, we would not change what we think is not wrong isnt it? we must first admit, AND then correct it.
Hey Zachary, Hi Anony, nice having you here…
True, right, repentance doesn’t mean doing a lip service (excuse me the pun) , but should we consistently feel guilty about a mistake we did? After all it did help us to grow up isn’t it? We became better men after it(of course going by the fact that, we have accepted it as a mistake). But what I would like to put up is a far more fundamental question. Damnation, what is that? And which mistakes are we talking about? The ones which we did for our own follies or something which we couldn’t even help(you know, some people say we are still paying the price for Adam and Eve’s mistake). If it is the wrongdoings against our fellow men, sure we need to reform. But Adam and Eve?(sorry fellas)
good analogy without putting hell and heaven into place. It make things more logical for non-christians. I agree man should repent.
rendall-
Haha, thanks for your comment. Are you a christian as well?