Repent!

How this loaded word just might remake us.

An adult novelty shop, exit 23.

Jesus is the Way.

A “Gentleman’s” Club, exit 47.

For all have sinned and fallen short of the Kingdom of God.

Freedom Trail Guns & Ammo, exit 10.

Pregnant? Choose Life.

XXX Video Store, exit 31.

Car Accident? Call Personal Injury Attorney ____________ to make them pay!

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No, I’m not incoherently rambling. These are a few real-life samplings of the schizophrenic billboard messaging I saw heading south on I-95 last weekend.

And amid these dizzying messages stood this one, tall and proud in all capital letters:

REPENT.

I won’t pretend to know the intentions of the person(s) who bought this billboard message but, no matter their motives, the word they chose to spotlight – repent -- stood out to me as particularly fitting in the middle of the other madness.

Repentance, though a theologically/religiously loaded word, simply means to turn away from wrong and head toward what is right.

We are living in a time in which the incalculable harm humans do to one another is multiplied and spread and consumed on a global scale. We all know too much about the human-wrought horrors of this world. In light of how often we are forced to witness people turning toward wrong, doesn’t a little repentance sound refreshing? Maybe even life giving?

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

We are picking back up the thread of how we might use storytelling to bring forth bold change in American Christianity. We left off with Harvard Business Review’s research which found that when an organization is facing an urgent problem, honoring the past is a vital step in shaping a true narrative that drives change. Looking at, and celebrating, the good is necessary to inspire hope as well as to get a realistic perspective on our collective story. We discussed that in the previous installment of this series.

However, that is only half of the process in honoring our past. Reckoning with the painful, ugly parts of our story is equally essential, which includes taking “full responsibility for the things that went wrong and acknowledging the human costs of those mistakes.”[1] Just as the schizophrenic trail of billboards down I-95 tells a complex, tragic, deeply human story, the collective choices we’ve made and actions we’ve taken (or failed to take) tell a story too, one that must be brought forth in its entirety.

This is the beginning of repentance, and it’s what we need perhaps more than anything else, if we want to pass down a vibrant, authentic, transformational faith to our children.

What we’re seeing now with the “exvangelical” movement, the rise of Christian deconstruction, plummeting church attendance (along with people who identify as Christian at all), and the seemingly never-ending, highly popular, docu-series exposing Christian misdeeds and hypocrisy is striking.

It’s something akin to a guttural, primal, John-the-Baptist style cry for collective repentance.

The horror stories of the #ChurchToo movement, the in-depth reporting on the atrocities of Christian boarding schools and rehabilitation centers, the unveiling of financial scams and all-out debauchery of prominent Christian leaders, these read like a warning letter to the churches in the Book of Revelation.

“But I have this against you, that you abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, then, from where you have fallen; repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” – Revelation 2:4-5

Those words hit a little differently when I consider how I may have abandoned the love I had at first and how much I desire to keep God’s lampstand in my life. What is the active response to this warning as recommended in these verses? Repent.

Simply telling the bad parts of our story has limited value if it doesn’t lead somewhere.

In her deeply insightful book On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, rabbi Danya Ruttenberg outlines a simple, but certainly not easy, process of repentance created by the twelfth-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides which includes the following:

• Public confession of harm

• A particular approach to making ammends

• A deep transformational work that culminates in changed actions

• A sincere, victim-centric apology

Let’s consider each of these steps and how they might help us be the bold change we long for in American Christianity.

Public Confession of Harm

Voicing outrage is commonplace these days. We seem to be proficient at exposing others, cancelling them, and jumping on bandwagons of justice. I’ve done all these things myself because, sometimes, that’s what the situation demands. However, this quickness toward outrage can devolve into what philosopher Jonathan Sacks calls competing stories of victimhood.

If we’re all only victims, then who can be held responsible for all the wrong that’s been done?

The truth is that, except for children, we are all responsible for ourselves. If an institution is sinful, damaging, or dysfunctional, and we stay within it, thereby helping it to perpetuate wrongness, then we are personally and collectively responsible too. I know this is an unpopular opinion these days, but I will stand by that statement and take my lumps, because I believe it is essential that we take responsibility for our own actions and complicity if we have any hope of moving forward into authentic change. Rabbi Ruttenberg wisely posits,

 “Addressing harm is possible only when we bravely face the gap between the story we tell about ourselves – the one in which we’re the hero, fighting the good fight, doing our best, behaving responsibly and appropriately in ever context – and the reality of our actions.”

I’m convinced that at least part of why Christianity seems devoid of transformational power is because we are often too proud, self-important, and stubborn to allow the repentance necessary for transformation to occur. And we’re too fearful to allow the world to see and hear the messiness of the transformational process in our lives.

We must publicly admit the harm we’ve caused, covered up, allowed, overlooked, and denied. Even if we were victimized by that harm ourselves, this does not absolve us of our personal responsibility to acknowledge our own part. This is the path to liberation, empowerment, and bold change.

A Particular Approach to Making Amends

After we’ve publicly acknowledged our part in the wrongness of our collective story, we must contextualize the amends we make. Institutional courage, according to Ruttenberg’s research, is “commitment to seek truth and engage in moral action, despite unpleasantness, risk, and short-term cost. It is a pledge to protect and care for those who depend on the institution. It is a compass oriented toward the common good of individuals, institutions, and the world.”

Each congregation, non-profit, community and family must ask these two questions:

1. What do these particular victims need?

2. Are they getting that?

Often, we approach repair with a one-size-fits-all mentality. We assume words, perhaps given in the form of apology, should be enough. Yet, when we do this, we are failing, once again, to recognize the human cost involved. Repair cannot happen without particularity, getting eye-to-eye with the ones who have been hurt and asking what they need, from their own perspectives.

A Deep & Transformational Work

Quoting Martha Crawford, Ruttenberg supplies this powerful insight:

“People don’t want to lose anything. Mostly what people want is to go back, to put things back the way they were before as if they’d never broken anything, which is really different than finding your way forward, and allowing a failure to remake you and remodel you and reorganize how you see yourself.”

We have an opportunity to be remodeled, remade, and reorganized by the fallout from our past. Yes, repentance is agonizing in many ways, but it also opens us to growth. I will return to the idea I’ve mentioned before that we are homemaking with God. If we allow the demolition of parts of our home which have become uninhabitable, we return to the starting point at which we can rebuild something new, life-giving, authentic, and heavenly.

The goals can’t be things as impotent as increasing church attendance, expanding influence, or gaining political power. We must commit to nothing less than a deep, transformative work within our Holy Organization that leads to lasting change and to the well-being of every single person. Our Christian organizations can, and should, be known as centers for thriving, as a little taste of heaven on earth for those parched and desperate for nourishment.

If we can access courage enough to tell our whole story, joyfully celebrating what we’ve gotten right and humbly acknowledging what we’ve gotten wrong, repenting in openness and honesty, focusing on the well-being and needs of particular people, and staying the course toward the goal of glorious transformation, we will have something truly incredible to offer our children, each other, and the entire world.

More importantly, we will have a love offering for our Creator – authentic, vulnerable, open-eyed, and open-hearted worship for the One who gifted us with life, with grace, and with one another.

On the next installment of this series, we’ll take a look at the specifics of what we need to change and why. Until then, I leave you with this Jewish parable, which has strong Prodigal Son threads woven throughout.

“A ruler had a child who had gone astray on a journey of a hundred days. The child’s friends said, ‘Return to your parent.’ The child said, ‘I cannot.’ Then the ruler sent a message to the child, saying, ‘Return as far as you can and I will come the rest of the way to you.’” In a similar way, God says, ‘Return to me and I will return to you.’” – Pesikta Rabbati

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[1] Harvard Business Review’s article on Storytelling that Drives Bold Change by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss