One evening, years ago, home from college for Christmas break, I dreamt that I was playing the piano, passionately and well, in the church sanctuary beneath the parsonage in the renovated mansion in rural New Hampshire where my father was the minister. It was something of a lucid dream because I remember calling on my conscious self to pay attention as to how I was doing it. In my waking life, I can do little more than form a three note C chord with one hand. Like an attentive movie-goer I tried to focus on what my fingers were doing as if it were possible for me to memorize not only the patterns themselves but the relationships between them. In the dream I was mindful and confident that I understood how it worked. I woke, late into the night, and felt the urgency that if I did not play right then, I would forever forget the knowledge I had carried with me from the alt-conscious realm. Throwing off the covers, I rushed downstairs, seating myself in front of the church piano. I tried to lay my fingers over the fingers in my memory and make them move the way I had remembered them moving. I tried to hold the mental images of the movements still while I copied them in time . . . only to no avail. With a sense of all that presently had seemed so true rapidly disappearing, dejected, I went back to bed.
There is a kind of knowledge that is so convincing that we think of it in our minds as being embodied. We fool ourselves often. Scripture acknowledges a very real discontinuity, however, between theory and practice when it warns us of the dangers of falsely repenting of sin. Often a person will confuse the presence of tears and groans with an undeniable proof that genuine change has taken place. Revelation, however, is only part of real turning. Revelation doesn’t guarantee anything other than the mere possibility of change. Visualizing a repudiation of sin is not the same thing as repentance.
The Puritan preacher and cartographer of contrition, Thomas Watson, has left us a time-tested map of the complete journey. In his Doctrine of Repentance he notes the Biblically framed stations where the pilgrim can expect her truly penitent soul to lodge before making it home. First, he says, one experiences a vision of her own sin. Soon after, she experiences sorrow over that sin. This inspires a confession of the sin. Most likely, shame or remorse over that sin begins to set in. She begins to hate her sin, until finally, in faith, she turns from it.
It is understandably common that Christians might have epiphanic experiences in which they perceive, all at once, what they have never seen in themselves before. This often happens with men who are brought into awareness of their own anger. Having camouflaged it for years under a veneer of justice and a desire for things to be done right, they are, understandably, shocked to see what others had been seeing in plain sight all along. This is an important stage. It’s genuine and meaningful soul work, but it is only the first leg of the journey. It is not simply knowledge of sin that renders the soul repentant. Nay, even sorrow can evaporate in the first filtered gray bars of the morning light. This is why the Apostle Paul warns us of the importance, not only of practicing godly sorrow but also of avoiding its doppelgänger, worldly sorrow.
For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. – 2 Corinthians 7:10
A natural question to ask at this point is why in the world anyone might come this far in the process of repentance, perhaps even to the stage of confession, and decide to turn back. Surely, sight of sin, sorrow over it, and confession of sin would be enough of an investment to motivate the penitent onward rather than into retreat. And yet, many do turn back.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. – James 1:22-24
So the Scriptures warn us of knowledge of sin that does not lead to repentance. James will go on to say that the truly repentant will be grateful for the journey because the end of it is a blessing which God has prepared those who have turned their back on sin. The siren in these waters is none other than catharsis. While it is true that the first three stages of repentance are a necessary first half of the journey, they also come with their own rewards, and it is universally understood that a good cry has oft been all the medicine one needed to keep them from true change. It is as if an inoculation of repentance has taken place. These tourists receive just enough from the worldly sorrow to keep them from ever getting the real thing. Of course, repentance by halves is sin by double. The options are extremely limited. As St. Theophan the Recluse is famed in saying, “Either do not sin, or repent.”
When one is able to traverse confession of sin, according to Watson, she will experience the burning heat of having been a fool. This in turn will lead to an utter detestation of sin. And it is these last two necessary stages that bring us right to the doorstep of true repentance. The Christian must get to the place where she experiences not only sorrow over sin but hatred of it. Godly sorrow leads to repentance through the valley of godly hate. It is this hate that the Holy Spirit will use to inspire godly killing, also known as the mortification of sin in the body, by the power of this same Spirit. Scripture tells us that a death is inevitable. Something will die, either the pilgrim or the sin. The person who lives to kill sin is truly repentant.
For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. – 2 Corinthians 7:10
When the believer practices confession as a form of habit, she invites the Spirit to not only show her the sin to be confessed, but also yields her passions to the process as well. She will weep. She will burn red. She will gnash her teeth. And she will kill sin. The most important factor in all of this is the object of our confession. We must, with the Psalmists, invite the Lord to show us our sin. We must invite Him to cure us of the dispassionate indifference that information glut and digital technology have forged in us. We must be discontent with mere catharsis. The hearer of our confession must never be the passive alt-conscious self. The Hearer of our confession must be God. When this becomes habit, divorced from indifference, then confession makes us unceasing prayers. This is how one rightfully learns to play the piano, how to love one another, or how to genuinely see victory over sin in one’s life. It is not a magic download that takes place while we are sleeping. It is a life of movements that accord to true and real movement. It is a life of practicing repentance.
Garrett Soucy lives in Maine with his wife and nine children where he is the pastor of Christ the King Church in Belfast. He is also a writer and musician.