The Practice of Self-Examination and Repentance

In the invitation to Lent, we’re encouraged to engage in the practices of “self-examination and repentance; prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; and reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” Over the next three weeks I’d like to reflect on these practices.

It’s important to understand at the outset that spiritual practices, or disciplines, are rooted in God’s work, not ours. God has initiated a love relationship with each one of us, demonstrated in the cross and resurrection of Jesus. As we respond to God’s initiative with faith and trust, we become assured of the stability and consistency of God’s love for us. Spiritual disciplines, then, are not meant in any way to merit God’s favor, but rather to help us learn to live within our new reality as God’s beloved child. In short, spiritual disciplines help us to become who we already are in Christ.

The first disciplines mentioned in the invitation to Lent are “self-examination and repentance.” I find that life in our contemporary culture makes self-examination difficult. Busy schedules and the ubiquity of smartphones leave us looking for constant stimulation from external sources, avoiding time for stillness—physically and mentally.

In a 2014 study, participants were asked to sit with nothing but their thoughts for six to fifteen minutes. In one version of the study, participants were given the option of giving themselves an electric shock, which, after experiencing the pain of the shock before the experiment, they all said that they’d pay money not to be shocked again. However, after several minutes of quiet, 25% of the women and 66% of the men chose to shock themselves rather than simply being quiet.

Why is it that self-examination, simply sitting alone with our thoughts, is so difficult? There are likely many reasons—fear, habit, genetics—none of which are healthy. As Christians, however, spending the time in self-examination is essential as we seek to “become who we are” in Christ, and we engage in the process with confidence, trusting that God, “to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid,” has radically accepted us in and through Christ.

As we engage in self-examination, we’ll no doubt find things that cause us guilt, shame, and embarrassment. This leads us to a need for repentance. Like self-examination, repentance is difficult in our culture. Admitting that we have done something wrong is dangerous, opening us to ridicule, shaming, and even loss of livelihood.

Two years ago David Brooks wrote a column about soldiers returning from battle, and how complicated it is for many of them to come to grips with what they experienced. He notes that, “We live in a culture that emphasizes therapy, but trauma often has to be overcome morally, through rigorous philosophical autobiography, nuanced judgment, case by case.” If we live in fear, however, of admitting a moral failing because of the potential outcry against us, we’re less likely to engage in the “rigorous philosophical autobiography” that Brooks suggests.

This is where the church can step in, as, each week, we kneel and confess that we’ve sinned. We admit things—“known and unknown,” “things done and left undone”—that fall far short of God’s intention for us, asking that, through God’s mercy, we might, “delight in [God’s] will and walk in [God’s] ways.”

In other words, we repent, we turn from destructive dispositions and behaviors toward, again, who we already are in Christ. What if we were a community in which it was safe to admit wrongdoing (and wrong-thinking and wrong-feeling), where we were assured of God’s forgiveness, and penitent sinners—each and every one of us—were welcomed on a journey of reconciliation with their neighbors with the “nuanced, case by case judgment,” which no doubt often involves difficult acts of restitution, that Brooks believes is necessary for healing?

As we embark on our Lenten journey together, then, let’s create space in our lives for the practices, the disciplines, of both self-examination and repentance, trusting that, because we have been radically loved and accepted by God in Christ, we need not fear, but rather come with a longing to become more and more who we already are.

Peace,

Chris