Robotic Repentance

This post is part 2 of what I began earlier, called “An Automated Apology.” This is intended to be a reminder that true religion can never be robotic; that faith is more than intellectual assent and that repentance is more than saying “sorry.” The heart of God has been shown to have moved us-ward, and the only proper response is that our hearts are to be found to moved God-ward.

Let me start with a story, from a different time and a different place. I was serving as a youth pastor, being pretty much a youth myself, and I found myself naively caught in a power play at the church board level. A deacon who ran the church and the pastor decimated me in a board meeting when I presented an idea that the pastor and I had discussed and agreed upon. We were coming to the board for approval, but this board member didn’t like it that he wasn’t given opportunity to veto the idea before the rest of the board heard it. I slunk away that night from that meeting to our apartment, licking my wounds. It was apparent that the offense toward me was real by the fact that another deacon stopped by the apartment that night, and I received a couple of phone calls from others. There was internal discussion, and it was agreed that I should meet with a small group in order for this man to apologize. This never happens. And, this never really happened. Because what he said to me that night was simply this: “I hope I didn’t say anything that you can’t get over.” That was it. No apology. No repentance.

The point of hearing about robotic repentance is that we might consider what true repentance is. It is certainly not a pious act by which we gain God’s favor. It is rather a grace (free gift) that can only be expressed as a grace - a sorriness for our own sin based on a God-given regard for Himself, and a discovery of how hateful that sin is to this holy God. True repentance is the grace by which we find ourselves more in love with Christ than with our sin. It is the side of faith associated with broken-heartedness and contrition. It is the condition by which we are properly humbled even as God, in our hearts and minds, is properly exalted.

Repentance is not merely saying ‘sorry.’ Any robot can be programmed to do that. Any graceless, guile-filled Pharisee can do that. Any 3-year old who wants to make the unpleasantness disappear can do that. We can all do that, and we all have done exactly that - treated our sin like it doesn’t matter, and we sincerely desire that we haven’t done anything that God can’t get over. But we are not to live like robots. Rather, like children of God.