Regrets

Thinking some more about my last post, it occurred to me that it bore directly on the answer to the question, "If you could do your life over, would you change anything?"

This, essentially, is the equivalent to asking, "Do you have any regrets about your life?"

Most folks that I hear answer this questions move through two phases:
Phase 1 - remembering the regrettable actions
This is usually accompanied by them looking pensively into the distance, eyes slightly unfocused, with their face registering the emotional content of the memories they're running through: smirk, frown, smile, grimace.
They begin to say, "Well, there was this time . . ."

Phase 2 - justification of regrettable actions
They then begin to remember what happened after those actions, specifically the things that they learned as a result of the actions, or the way that the consequences of the actions positively shaped them, and they end up saying something like, " . . . but if I hadn't done that, then I never would have learned XYZ, and XYZ is such a good thing to know. So, no, I wouldn't change anything."

On one level, this self-justification for sin in light of eventual positive consequences can seem quite benign: "I probably shouldn't have yelled at my Mom, but then we had the deepest conversation we ever had, so I guess I'm kinda glad I did."

Applying the same logic, though, to a different situation reveals the brokenness of this thinking: "Yeah, I shouldn't have shot and killed that guy, but then I went to prison and learned a valuable lesson: You never, ever want to go to prison. I wouldn't have learned that lesson without actually going, so, in the end, shooting & killing that guy turned out to be a good thing for me."

Actually, for non-Christians, this kind of eventual-positive-consequences as redemption of sin seems to me to be the only way one can move through the world with any kind of intact psyche. We were not created to live under the burden of unredemption. We were created to live as redeemed children of our Heavenly Father. So if we're not going to experience the true Redemption from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, then we needs must find some other form of redemption.

This sort of weak consequences-based redemption is not ultimately satisfying, and is usually accompanied by folks just simply forgetting their own past so as not to live under it's burden. Further, I think that deep down, we know that this lame attempt at redemption is just that: lame. And a kind of cognitive dissonance develops where you know that what you're doing is ineffective, yet you continue to do it hoping that it will work.

I catch myself applying this kind of redemption to myself, though. And when I do, I think, "Why am I trying to redeem my own sins? The Father has already done this for me!"

So if you ask me, I'll tell you: I have some serious regrets about thing's I've thought, said, and done over the course of these past 31 years. But the Lord has redeemed those sinful thoughts/words/actions and brought good from many them in the here-and-now, and I trust that at the revelation of all things, I will see how all has been redeemed.

I didn't have to touch the stove to learn that I would get burned. But when I burned myself, the Lord used it to teach me about stoves, about him, and about myself. I wish I had never touched the stove, but I am greatful to follow a God who redeems.

[Editor's Note: Your usual Piebald Life poster, Alex, is back from Camp. Huzzah! Though you may regret his time away, Macon his guest-blogger, thoroughly enjoyed his stay. Macon will decamp to the Stokes Kith & Kin blog without any regrets about his time here. Because he "learned so much," of course.]