Repentant Apologies

This was a talk I gave in church this month:

Let me start, by reading an excerpt from a post from the page “Come Follow Me Daily” which stood out to me a few weeks ago. 

“I think I often put Zion on a pedestal. A perfect people that made perfect choices. THAT’S why they were good enough. THAT’S why God walked with them. But that obviously isn’t true. They were still regular people in a fallen world. All that mentality does is separate me from God and make what they did seem unobtainable. And any real community is messy—a bunch of perspectives, and a bunch of experiences all bumping into each other. Here is my guess. Probably the same day that the city was taken up, there was a misunderstanding that left someone hurt. Probably that same day, there was an action that impacted another person negatively. Maybe, at the very moment they were taken up, someone was crying. Zion is not perfection. It is constantly turning to the One who is. So while all those things might have happened, I firmly believe these things were happening too: Communication after misunderstanding. Apologies after missteps. Repair where things were broken. Grace before it was asked for. Forgiveness. Second tries. Thirds. Fourths. Loving shifts in expectations so someone could succeed. Tears, but with eyes lifted up.  And a continual turning toward the Savior. “One heart and one mind” doesn’t make interactions easy. It makes them valuable. This wasn’t a perfect people. It was a trying people. A loving people.”

(If you're not familiar with the story of the city of Enoch, let me direct you here.)

I think this lines up well with Mosiah 18: 20-22 which reads 

“Yea, even he commanded them that they should preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people. And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another. And thus he commanded them to preach. And thus they became the children of God.” 

I’ll pause at the mention of “there should be no contention one with another.” I think its tempting to read that and assume that there was no contention in the city of Enoch. But looking at the definitions for the word “contention” I see “a struggling between opponents; competition.” In which case I might argue there was no contention in Enoch.  Not because there were never any disagreements or hurt feelings but because those disagreements were never born from a place where they believed the other person was their enemy. It was never a competition to be right so the other person could be proven wrong. And instead, an opportunity to seek God. An opportunity to understand, return and repair and move forward together.

The people of Enoch may well have been imperfect. But as a community, I believe they were the best at utilizing repentance, not only with their Heavenly Father, but with each other. I believe they strove to see the best in one another, and chose to have faith that through moments of feeling broken hearted, their fellow men were also striving to do their best.

With that, I’d like to turn my attention to the process by which we repent and how it relates to our interactions with one another. The bible dictionary tells us that the Greek word being translated when we refer to repentance denotes “a change of mind, a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world.” At its heart, I think it requires and indicates hope.  A willingness to admit we were wrong. The desire to better know God, and an intentional desire to better understand ourselves and one another.

The first element listed in the process of repentance is Faith in our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. This is where I think it become obvious that repentance requires hope. Why else do we repent, if not because we have faith that repentance is possible because of our Savior Jesus Christ? Why else do we repent if not because of the desire to return to our Heavenly Father and to become more like Him? The belief that we can become more like them. We desire to repent when we desire to honor our relationship with them. Similarly, apologies are a means to restore trust in our relationships, especially those we value. Apologies are a way of seeking to align ourselves with those who have been hurt. When we seek to engage in sincere apologies, we will not see them as an act of defeat in the war of being right or wrong. Instead, real apologies are an indication that we believe people are more important than our own ego.

The second element of repentance, is “sorrow for sin.” In the strictest sense, we define sin as willfully disobeying Heavenly Father’s laws. In that sense, we believe that we will only be held accountable for that which we understood to be wrong and chose to do anyway, right? But I ask you, why do we teach our children to apologize for accidents? If my foot is extended in the aisle and unintentionally causes someone to trip, have I sinned? Obviously, we all know the answer is no. So then, why do we apologize? The second part of the definition of sin is “to fail to act righteously despite a knowledge of the truth.” So then, the sin in this case, lies not in the original act, but in the moment that we come to understand that we have contributed to the hurt of another person, and refuse to sacrifice our own ego in order to make repair. I think we have all found ourselves in the position where our knee jerk reaction was to say “well that wasn’t my intention so I shouldn’t be held accountable here.” But as soon as we are made aware that we caused or contributed to harm, repentance requires that we feel sorrow. If you cannot feel sorrow despite having caused harm, intentionally or not, then you cannot and have not repented.

We have been commanded to love God, and we have been commanded to love our neighbor. And if we love them, then sorrow for having caused harm will be a natural side effect. I think with this in mind, it stands to reason why we feel so hurt when people who profess to love us refuse to apologize. Can you say that you love someone if it does not cause you sorrow to learn that you have hurt them? Godly sorrow requires that we also have a sincere desire to do everything we need to do to receive forgiveness.

The third element of repentance is confession. We need to admit our mistakes, admit when we were wrong, acknowledge the negative effects of our choices. At its core I think this is evidence that God knows the value of communication. Sorrow is not enough if we are unwilling to communicate that sorrow. We cannot expect God to forgive us if we will not confess. Similarly we cannot expect others in our lives to forgive us if we cannot convey an awareness of the effects of our actions. That is not to refute the commandment to forgive. Whether we apologize or not, repent or not, our fellow man is still commanded to forgive us, the same we way are commanded to forgive even when we do not receive that long-awaited apology. But unless we confess, unless we admit what we have done, we ourselves cannot expect forgiveness. And we can only assume that because God expects us to confess to Him, that he expects us to treat our neighbor in the same way. His gospel is meant to teach us after all.

The fourth element is the forsaking of sin. At its core, repentance is about becoming more like God, who does not sin. It’s about change and growth and improvement. We cannot claim to be seeking to be more like God when we are knowingly continuing the same behavior that brought us to needing to repent. And this applies to our relationships with other people just as much as it applies to our relationship with God. Let’s review the definition of repentance again: “To commit sin is to willfully disobey God’s commandments or to fail or act righteously despite a knowledge of the truth.” Once we know that sticking our foot into the aisle can cause unintentional harm, we have an obligation to make an intentional goal of not sticking our foot into the aisle. Repentance is about being intentional. I suppose the definition of being righteous, would be the opposite of sin. Someone who willfully obeys God’s commandments and acts according to the truths they understand. Relationships also require that we be intentional.

The fifth element is restitution. In the story of Abimelech, he takes Abraham’s wife Sarah with the intention of making her his, but he is unaware that she is already married. When the Lord comes to him in a dream to inform him, he says “in the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done this.” And God says “I know.” “for I also withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.” So God didn’t let him take things so far as to have sinned against Him, however, he still gives instructions for how Abimelech needs to correct the situation with Abraham and Sarah. “Now therefore restore the man his wife” And in the morning, Abimelech goes to Abraham and says “I wish you had told me, so I would not have done this.” And had the story stopped there Abimelech would have been in the wrong. Abraham proceeds to explain why he had fudged the truth and admits that he had pre-judged Abimelech thinking to himself “surely the fear of God is not in this place.” And then Abimelech returns Sarah, and as an addition to his restitution, he gifts Abraham with sheep and oxen, money and servants and says, you can live anywhere in my land that you wish. Abraham proceeds to pray unto God and God heals Abimelech and his wife and servants that they can once again bare children.  I won’t argue that this is the best example of apologies, but I do think it’s a relatable one. And one where both sides seek to take responsibility for their part and make restitution. Repentance requires that when our actions cause hurt or damage to others, that we seek to repair.

Finally, the last element of repentance is righteous living. We often hear the phrase “repent daily” and ask ourselves, well, I’m not sure how to do that. How do I have sorrow for sin, confess, give up the sin, make restitution every single day? What if I’m still in that chapter where I don’t know what I did wrong? What if I feel like I didn’t do anything wrong today? How do I repent daily? And to that end, I think it’s important that we remember the first and the last elements of repentance. To review, the first element was Faith in our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Turning to the Savior and relying on His power and acting on that faith is how we are cleansed from sin. And lastly, righteous living. Doing our best to follow Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. This means going back to basics. Study scriptures, praying every day, going to church, taking the sacrament, paying tithing, attending the temple. What was the opposite of sin? Willfully obeying God’s commandments. Deliberately. Intentionally. On purpose. And when we come to that second part of the definition for sin “failing to act righteously despite a knowledge of the truth.” Perhaps righteous living requires actively taking steps to further our understanding of the truth so that we can better understand how to act righteously. How do we apply that to relationships? Learning about those we love. Studying them. Communicating with them. Doing things with them, making good habits with them.

I think sometimes the key to repair is exposure therapy. When someone apologizes and then walks away without making restitution, or makes restitution, but then avoids us like the plague, we may forgive them, but we don’t feel the healing balm of restored trust. That requires putting ourselves back in the relationship and proving that we are here to be intentional. We are here to keep trying. We are here to make mistakes, but we are also here to fix them to the best of our ability. In light of the baptisms that occurred yesterday, I am reminded of our baptismal covenant to comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to mourn with those who morn. The commandment to love God, and to love our neighbor serves as a reminder to apply the things God is teaching us to our daily lives, and to our interactions with others.

I’ll end with the scripture I started with: “Yea, even he commanded them that they should preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people. And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another. And thus he commanded them to preach. And thus they became the children of God.” Mosiah 18: 20-22.

Let us seek to be a more Zion-like people in our relationships. More like the children of God that we are, and that we can become.