Sean Johnson - Intentionally - The Education of Sean Johnson

People have been telling me that remorse and guilt are useless emotions. They’ve been telling me that my attempts at genuine repentance aren’t useful, and will just make me feel worse.

I’ve been reading Kierkegaard pretty intently as of late, and he was a pretty intelligent guy. Some of his thoughts on remorse:

“….Repentance and remorse know how to make use of time in fear and trembling. When remorse awakens concern, whether it be in the youth, or in the old man, it awakens it always at the eleventh hour. It does not have much time at its disposal, for it is at the eleventh hour. It is not deceived by a false notion of a long life, for it is at the eleventh hour. And in the eleventh hour one understands life in a wholly different way than in the days of youth or in the busy time of manhood or in the final moment of old age.

“He who repents at any other hour of the day repents in the temporal sense. He fortifies himself by a false and hasty conception of the insignificance of his guilt. He braces himself with a false and hasty notion of life’s length. His remorse is not in true inwardness of spirit.

“Oh, eleventh hour, wherever thou art present, how all is changed….when the account is rendered, yet there is no accuser there; when all is called by its own name, yet there is nothing said; when each improper word must be repeated, in the light of eternity!

“Oh, costly bargain, where remorse must pay so dearly for what seemed in the eyes of lightheartedness and busyness and proud struggling and impatient passion and the judgment of the world to be reckoned as nothing! Oh, eleventh hour, how terrible if Thou shouldst remain, how much more terrible than if death should continue through a whole life!

“….[Repentance] can so easily be confused with its opposite, with the momentary feeling of contrition…with a desperate feeling of grief in itself, that is with impatience. But impatience, no matter how long it continues to rage, never becomes repentance. However clouded, then, the mind becomes, the sobs of impatience, no matter how violent they are, never become sobs of repentance. The tears of impatience lack the blessed fruitfulness. They are like empty clouds that bear no water, or like convulsive puffs of wind.

“On the other hand, if a man assumed an even heavier guilt, but at the same time improved and year after year went steadily forward in the good, it is certain that from year to year, he would with greater intensity repent of his guilt, the guilt which year by year in a temporal sense he would be leaving further and further behind.

“For it is indeed the case that guilt must be alive for a man if he is honestly to repent. But just for that reason, precipitate repentance is false and is never to be sought after. For it may not be the inner anxiety of heart but only the momentary feeling that presents the guilt so actively. This kind of repentance is selfish, a matter of the senses, sensually powerful for the moment, excited in expression, inpatient in the most diverse exaggerations - and is not real repentance.

“Sudden repentance would drink down all the bitterness of sorrow in a single draught and then hurry on. It wants to get away from guilt. It wants to banish all recollection of it, fortifying itself by imagining that it does this in order not to be held back in the pursuit of the Good. It is its wish that guilt, after a time, might be wholly forgotten. And once again, this is impatience.” - From Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing

It’s interesting how we look for any opportunity to avoid dealing with true remorse. Most of us go through our lives desperately trying to fill our lives up with distractions - anything to keep us from dealing with our own faults. Repentance, even among most Christians, is rarely practiced in the truest sense.

I’ve thought in the past that I was good at admitting my faults and my sins. But my remorse was indeed hasty - a quick apology to the man upstairs and then I was on my way. That’s most likely why I kept doing the same bad things, falling for the same tricks, committing the same sins, over and over and over and over.

This week is the first time I’ve really tried to face myself, and how bad my past transgressions really were. It’s not a pretty site, forcing yourself to face your own evil. And you can’t look to others for support - people who know you will try to convince you that it’s not healthy out of concern for you, and people who don’t know you will just think you’re nuts.

But if you are to truly make a change in your life, not just in habit, but in your soul, then the quick remorse approach won’t cut it. I did it my whole life, and the vices I had as a young boy followed me to where I am now. The quick fix didn’t fix the problem. Setting personal goals for behavior change didn’t fix the problem. Putting a rubber band on my wrist and snapping it whenever I was falling for one of my vices didn’t fix the problem. Just left a big welt.

True repentance is hard to come by in our lives today. True remorse is almost impossible in our fast-food, busy-busy-busy, gotta-cram-in-the-conference-call-on-the-commute-to-work lifestyle. That’s why I have to learn how to do it now, while my company is still in the fledgling stages and I have the time to actually reflect and think uninterrupted for more than five minutes.

Facing my evil is hard to do. It makes me break down. It makes me cry (which I hate doing.) But it is necessary for my soul to change. And it’s better than the alternative, which is to be confronted with a lifetime of evil when you’re 85 years old, have all the time in the world to think about it, and have no second chance to live your life over again.

It also beats having a welt on your wrist from a stupid rubber band.