Honesty and repentance are among the most significant things Christianity asks of us.
The above comes from a video recently suggested to me through private correspondence. I will skip the actual subject matter of that video and focus instead on the thought expressed above, which has kept me ruminating for three or four days.
Honesty and repentance. I struggle to think of two things Christians and Christianity as a whole need more in this time of unmitigated lies and place of obstinate unrepentance.
Honesty for spiritual integrity and alignment with reality, and repentance for when our spiritual integrity crumbles and our alignment with reality falters.
One can only be truly free when one is honest. Honest with himself, honest with others, honest with the world, and honest before God.
Without that honesty, one can no longer claim to stand in truth. Freedom slips away, and one becomes a prisoner of untruth, however slight that untruth may be. Ultimately, when dishonest, we willingly become subjects of the Father of Lies.
The reasons for and causes of dishonesty are as plentiful as the stars in a clear night sky. Yet the vast majority trace back to fear, expedience, ego, and pride.
We are often too scared to be honest. Or we discover advantages in being untruthful. Or we refuse to admit that we may have been in error, wrongly motivated, or deceitful in intent. We are desperate to save face. To maintain our inflated (and false) sense of self. Or our pride simply rejects the truths our memory subtly communicates to us.
Whatever the case, it is virtually impossible for Christians to be honest all of the time. Even the most forthright among us slip, usually many times a day. Often far more than that. Every lie strips away our freedom and derails our alignment with the Divine.
Yet this virtual impossibility can be overcome through the power of repentance, which, as far as I’m concerned, qualifies as the ultimate expression of honesty, at least in mortal life.
Repentance is the sincere, straightforward, genuine acknowledgment of sin, particularly the sin of dishonesty. Repentance equals acknowledging and standing up to the very fear, expedience, ego, and pride that led us into sin in the first place. At its core, repentance is honesty about dishonesty.
Being honest about our dishonesty is one of our greatest challenges. Instead of being truthful, we often lie and then, to make matters worse, lie about our lying. The lies settle on each other and solidify in sedimentary layers, crushing the original chance at truth we originally rejected into dust.
Refusing to be honest about our dishonesty also hinders a core purpose of our mortal lives—learning, particularly spiritual learning. What can we expect to learn from our time in this world when we continually twist and warp our experiences through untruth?
How can we expect others to learn anything from us, save perhaps negatively?
Moreover, what sort of communion can we anticipate with the Divine if we offer nothing more than falsehoods, fabrications, deceptions, and dissimulation?
Worse, what can we expect from God when we refuse to admit our falsehoods and lie about our need to repent?
Learning requires honesty. Honesty is freedom. Slipping into dishonesty requires repentance so we may free ourselves to learn once more.
Without honesty and repentance, there is neither freedom nor learning, entailing that we may not have much to draw upon when presented with the choice of everlasting life after our mortal lives end.
The above comes from a video recently suggested to me through private correspondence. I will skip the actual subject matter of that video and focus instead on the thought expressed above, which has kept me ruminating for three or four days.
Honesty and repentance. I struggle to think of two things Christians and Christianity as a whole need more in this time of unmitigated lies and place of obstinate unrepentance.
Honesty for spiritual integrity and alignment with reality, and repentance for when our spiritual integrity crumbles and our alignment with reality falters.
One can only be truly free when one is honest. Honest with himself, honest with others, honest with the world, and honest before God.
Without that honesty, one can no longer claim to stand in truth. Freedom slips away, and one becomes a prisoner of untruth, however slight that untruth may be. Ultimately, when dishonest, we willingly become subjects of the Father of Lies.
The reasons for and causes of dishonesty are as plentiful as the stars in a clear night sky. Yet the vast majority trace back to fear, expedience, ego, and pride.
We are often too scared to be honest. Or we discover advantages in being untruthful. Or we refuse to admit that we may have been in error, wrongly motivated, or deceitful in intent. We are desperate to save face. To maintain our inflated (and false) sense of self. Or our pride simply rejects the truths our memory subtly communicates to us.
Whatever the case, it is virtually impossible for Christians to be honest all of the time. Even the most forthright among us slip, usually many times a day. Often far more than that. Every lie strips away our freedom and derails our alignment with the Divine.
Yet this virtual impossibility can be overcome through the power of repentance, which, as far as I’m concerned, qualifies as the ultimate expression of honesty, at least in mortal life.
Repentance is the sincere, straightforward, genuine acknowledgment of sin, particularly the sin of dishonesty. Repentance equals acknowledging and standing up to the very fear, expedience, ego, and pride that led us into sin in the first place. At its core, repentance is honesty about dishonesty.
Being honest about our dishonesty is one of our greatest challenges. Instead of being truthful, we often lie and then, to make matters worse, lie about our lying. The lies settle on each other and solidify in sedimentary layers, crushing the original chance at truth we originally rejected into dust.
Refusing to be honest about our dishonesty also hinders a core purpose of our mortal lives—learning, particularly spiritual learning. What can we expect to learn from our time in this world when we continually twist and warp our experiences through untruth?
How can we expect others to learn anything from us, save perhaps negatively?
Moreover, what sort of communion can we anticipate with the Divine if we offer nothing more than falsehoods, fabrications, deceptions, and dissimulation?
Worse, what can we expect from God when we refuse to admit our falsehoods and lie about our need to repent?
Learning requires honesty. Honesty is freedom. Slipping into dishonesty requires repentance so we may free ourselves to learn once more.
Without honesty and repentance, there is neither freedom nor learning, entailing that we may not have much to draw upon when presented with the choice of everlasting life after our mortal lives end.
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