|
|
Repentance is a simple thing but it's also difficult. It requires one to humble oneself before his or her creator.
Unfortunately for so many humans, that sort of humility just isn't on their menu. "Nobody's gonna tell me what to do!" "Sin? Are you serious?" "God and the Bible are for weak people who can't handle reality." "Hey, you do you. Just keep your nose out of my business." Sound familiar? Common mantras, especially for people who are used to being free and doing whatever they want to do. A description that fits pretty much everyone living in Western industrialized countries like the United States, Canada, Australia and most of Europe. But what is this repentance thing, and why should anyone have to do it? When a Christian speaks of repentance, he or she is not referring to just saying some preset words. True repentance must be genuine, and only the Lord knows for sure if any individual is truly sorry for sins committed and wishes to stop committing them. For repentance to make sense, one has to recognize that there's something to repent. In contemporary Western culture, sins have been reduced to mistakes, and mistakes have been reduced to individual preferences. Which is to say, the cultural architects of chaos in our universities have effectively succeeded over the last hundred years. The concept that human beings can offend God has become pretty much non-existent for secular people in 2024. The Golden Rule has been replaced by the Wiccan Rede and no one seems to realize the switch took place. The subtle difference between the two has created a tsunami of cultural change that brings us to today, a time of endless school shootings, parents defending the inclusion of gay pornography in grade school libraries, and moral corruption so widespread that the average man on the street doesn't even recognize lies when 'official' news sources spread them. There was a time not so long ago, when despite the ever-present existence of evil, the average person knew full well the difference between good and evil, and also knew the distinction between God and evil. The average person no longer recognizes nor understands the difference, and furthermore has no interest in learning it. So therefore, since there is no motivation to repent, and no desire to acknowledge what one must repent of, the wide path has been smoothly paved and most of us walk on it. As we near the precipice to the dark chasm that awaits us on the wide path, we all have a God-given mind to understand the meanings of the signposts along the way. Therefore we will have no excuse when Jesus Christ Himself utters these words to those of us who did not repent: "I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." |