In the Process of Repenting - Jesus and the Undoing of Adam (1)

I will be posting over the next few weeks some thoughts and personal insights from reading Jesus and the Undoing of Adam by C. Baxter Kruger. If you are looking for a theological stretch get the book and interact with me. 

"Repent and believe" were words I heard before I could speak since I was taken to church within two weeks of birth and carried, sat through a lot of revivals. The implied words that went with that phrase was "or burn."

Within that spiritual community "repent" meant to be very sorry for being a sinner and there was always unspoken concern about someone who did not appear to be remorseful enough for being a sinner. What a set up for excesses of emotional exhibitionism along with genuine responses to hearing about grace. Its the mixture that is confusing. If it was all fake and hysteria or if it was all genuine, it would have been less confusing and less about being arrogantly judgmental.

Even sorting out the meaning of "repent" later after I learned Greek was not easy. As I often say to people, "It's the unlearning that is so hard; much more difficult than learning something new." The root meaning of the usual word translated "repent" means a radical reorientation of one's mind. Yes, there can be lots of emotion when we see that to which we have been blind but the issue is not about being sorry enough to convince God you have enough remorse.

Repentance is not a revision of reality but a revision of our perception of reality. So, repentance can happen in lots of areas. We may have a radical reorientation about our work, spouses, politics, congregation, God, our theology and even about ourselves.

There is a sense that growth as a person is a process of repenting - moving from seeing in old ways to seeing with new eyes. When we stop repenting, we stop growing. Yes, some issues are more dramatic and life altering than others but growth does equal change but not all change equals growth.

What keeps us from seeing what we don't see in some of the most important areas of our life? What keeps us stuck in old thinking even after it has stopped being life-giving? Mostly, it's about our mental and emotional baggage. The issue is not the we have it - we all do. The issue is whether we are willing to "have eyes to see" and "ears to hear" what it is that is keeping us stuck in perceptions that don't reflect reality.

If we are to know anything as it is, and thus to have true knowledge of it, we must deal with our baggage, we must refine our mental instruments so that they are increasingly appropriate to the thing or person we want to know. Otherwise, we shoot our own dreams in the foot. For failure to repent, failure to revise our mental baggage inerrantly means that we are imposing our own alien ideas upon the world and the people around us, thereby dooming ourselves to live in a world generated by our own imagination.   - page 12

Sounds like the man has been to BT!

Question to ponder: How am I robbing myself of seeing reality more clearly?

Nest: My repenting about false perceptions about God and grace