An honest person acknowledges fault as soon as it is realized. They admit what they did and why they did it to God and anyone affected by it.1 They don’t deflect, move goalposts, or revise history or warp reality to make themselves feel better or avoid change.2
Honest people don’t just say they are sorry. They immediately make the changes necessary to prevent committing the offense again in the future. They fully recognize any harm to themselves or others,3 and do all they can to to make restitution for the loss they’ve caused.4
People are overly compassionate to their past selves, not realizing that compassion for your past can only come at the expense of your future. Anyone unwilling to condemn their past self for willingly choosing what was less than the best they knew would do it again if they had the chance. So many entrap themselves in fairy tales about the past, making it seem better than it really was by either deliberately maintaining what they know is an illusion or by artificially inflating what they know wasn’t as good as they wish.5 Honesty about your past is the key to securing freedom from guilt. If you refuse to denounce your past foibles, you won’t find the present peace that comes from separating yourself from them.
You can choose to feel good about your past or be better in your future, but you can’t do both at the same time. Any lies about your past blind you to the reality of the present and possibility of the future. While you are chained to your past self, you cannot grow into a better person. Lies about your past mistakes trap you in a cycle of repeating them.
You will only find peace in the present through condemning the mistakes of your past. Analyzing what you got wrong in the past is essential to making yourself better in the future. The breadth, depth, and accuracy of your understanding of the present is limited by the breadth, depth, and accuracy of your admissions of the past.
While you still agree with or excuse the mistakes you made in the past, you retain the guilt that comes with them. Admit your fault, change your principles so it will never happen again, and trust in the forgiveness of Jesus.
Footnotes
- 1. ...acknowledge your faults and that wrong which ye have done. (Alma 39:13) ↩
- 2. Honest Nephi gratefully reflected on the fact that his father had saved them from Jerusalem before it was destroyed (see 1 Nephi 3:18), but his dishonest brothers complained that their conditions would have been much better if they had stayed, when in reality they would have been killed (see 1 Nephi 17:20-22). ↩
- 3. Until you admit the cost of your past mistakes, you’ll lack sufficient motivation to grow out of them. ↩
- 4. Speak unto the children of Israel, When a man or woman shall commit any sin that men commit, to do a trespass against the Lord, and that person be guilty; Then they shall confess their sin which they have done: and he shall recompense his trespass with the principal thereof, and add unto it the fifth part thereof, and give it unto him against whom he hath trespassed. (Numbers 5:6-7) ↩
- 5. Consider Laman and Lemuel, who insisted that they would have been happy if they remained in Jerusalem, even after Jerusalem had been destroyed. See 1 Nephi 3:18 and 1 Nephi 17:20-22. ↩