To repent means to fully reconcile your ideas, desires, and actions to your sincere understanding of what is best.
Repentance is perceived as a religious idea, and not a very popular one at that. While no one, in or out of a religion, seems to get excited about the idea, repentance is a critically important practice for all people. If you understood what it meant and what it leads to, you would, in fact, prioritize it highly.
Repentance is not just an idea for those who believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In fact, for Judeo-Christians, atheists, and everyone else, you will not find anything more important to understand and practice than repentance.
No matter what your beliefs are, and no matter what it is that you desire, repentance is the key to obtaining what you desire in life. This point is tautological; if you believe something is best, clearly it holds the highest priority to you among competing options. No matter who you are or what you want in life, the most effective path to obtaining it relies in fully reconciling your ideas, desires, and actions to your sincere understanding of what is best.
Repentance is a concept that is exceedingly easy to understand. Were it not for the many layers of false beliefs and poor examples regarding repentance, the first sentence of this chapter would be sufficient to teach everything one needs to know to practice it.
In order to clear up the confusion, this book contains chapters that will thoroughly explain repentance and surrounding topics. I have made an attempt to make this book as accessible to as broad an audience as possible with the hope that, no matter the ideological background of the reader, they will find a clear explanation of these ideas and sufficiently strong reasons to repent.
Though it will take time to adequately argue, my premise from the outset is that, for all who have not yet done it, repentance is absolutely the most important thing you could understand and practice. It is the gateway to all you desire, all that is good, and all that endures.
Nomenclature
From the outset, we will need to address the terms used when discussing repentance. Much of the confusion on the topic comes from a fuzzy vocabulary.
Previously, repentance was defined as fully reconciling your ideas, desires, and actions to your sincere understanding of what is best.
What is best is defined as righteousness. This is, perhaps, the first major point of contention between the religious and not, as the former tend to believe that righteousness is defined by another person, and the latter do not. This probably ought to be less of a disagreement than it is. While a full argument of this point will have to wait until later in this book, it is important to note that “righteousness” is not a static list of ideas or actions. Furthermore, it isn’t something one person can dictate to another without the involvement and consent of the conscience. In other words, the determination of what is best is something that relies on the understanding of the individual. While this can be and is heavily influenced by interactions with others, it is neither proper nor possible for one person to merely dictate righteousness to another. Not even God does this. He reasons with a person, as one person reasons with another. Again, much more will be discussed on this topic later.
Deviation from what is best is called sin. Sin is a word with highly charged connotations that vary wildly depending on who is using it. It ought not be this way. Sin is simply willingly doing less than your best. In this usage, we clearly have not defined what is best, but simply assigned a name to doing anything less. Under this definition, it is obviously useful, good, and desirable to recognize and correct sin, as it reorients someone to what they say they want, not what someone else says they want.
The choice to sin creates the need for repentance. When someone is already living in a state where they constantly think, desire, and do what they sincerely understand to be best, there is no sin and therefore no need for repentance. The state of being reconciled to what is best is called sinlessness.
Sin is not a problem limited to the religious
For too many secular people, sin is something they believe only comes from and applies to the religious. On some level, it is as if they think that deciding not to believe in God frees them from the consequences of not living up to their own ideal. They know very well that it does not.
No amount of disbelief in the faith of others will free you of the guilt you feel for violating your own conscience.
Sin is a problem, even for the religious
Modern Judeo-Christians believe that professing their belief in God will free them from the guilt of doing less than their best. Their belief is equally ineffective in its aim as the atheists’, who believe that professing disbelief in God will free them from the guilt of doing less than their best.
Somewhere between Christ’s resurrection and now, churches replaced righteousness with religiousness. This is not only wrong, it is strictly antithetical to what Jesus taught, did, and is.
You will have a hard time finding a church that believes that you have to stop sinning to be saved. It seems that every Judeo-Christian congregation teaches people to break God’s commandments or, at least, that they can be saved while still doing so.
The purpose of Jesus’ sacrifice was not to provide mankind with a way to avoid the justice of God. Rather, he came to provide a way that God's justice could result in their blessing, through their choice to faithfully learn and live his instructions:
And for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that they may be judged according to their works. (3 Nephi 27:15)[^1]
Jesus' ministry, sacrifice, and resurrection wasn’t to excuse you for present and continued sin, but to give you a way of being forgiven of past sin and a sufficient reason to discontinue future sin.
If you believe in Jesus, you will act, think, and desire as he did and does. If you do not act, think, and desire as he did and does, you do not believe in him.
5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1)
Church goers will be surprised to learn that God doesn’t care how much time they spend at church, but rather how completely and consistently they do his will in their lives.
Though couched in the worship forms of his time, a poignant description of what the Lord thinks of the religious rites of people who do not actually obey him is provided by Isaiah:
11 For what purpose are your abundant sacrifices to me? says Jehovah. I have had my fill of offerings of rams and fat of fatted beasts; the blood of bulls and sheep and he-goats I do not want.
12 When you come to see me, who requires you to trample my courts so?
13 Bring no more worthless offerings; they are as a loathsome incense to me. As for convening meetings at the New Month and on the Sabbath, wickedness with the solemn gathering I cannot approve.
14 Your monthly and regular meetings my soul detests. They have become a burden on me; I am weary of putting up with them.
15 When you spread forth your hands, I will conceal my eyes from you; though you pray at length, I will not hear—your hands are filled with blood.
16 Wash yourselves clean: remove your wicked deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil.
17 Learn to do good: demand justice, stand up for the oppressed; plead the cause of the fatherless, appeal on behalf of the widow.
(Isaiah 1, Gileadi Translation)
3 But whoever slaughters an ox is as one who kills a man, and whoever sacrifices a lamb, as one who breaks a dog’s neck; whoever presents a grain offering is as one who offers swine’s blood, and whoever burns incense, as one who venerates idols. Just as they have preferred to go their own ways, their souls delighting in their abominations,
4 ...They did what was evil in my eyes; they chose to do what was not my will. (Isaiah 66, Gileadi Translation)
God desires for you to worship him “in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24) You can’t worship God in truth without actually doing what he says. During his mortal ministry, the Lord asked:
And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? (Luke 6:46)
Paul explained:
13 For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another; (Romans 2)
God wants obedience to him, and no amount of religious rites or ritual can substitute.
“What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me [without your repentance]?” Says the Lord. “I have had enough of [your] burnt offerings of rams And the fat of well‐fed cattle [without your obedience]; And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls or lambs or goats [offered without repentance]. (Isaiah 1:11, AMP)
God wants you to act, think, and desire as he does. He can teach you how to do this, but not if your life is already filled with church activities and your mind is already filled with the idea that professing belief in him somehow gives you the right to continue to disobey him.
Religious rituals do not make you righteous
Modern professed Christians have repeated the mistake of the Jews: they assume that their religious affiliation will cause God to pour out his blessings upon them, even when they often and knowingly rebel against him:
6 ...For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:
27 ...Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved:
30 What shall we say then? That the Gentiles...have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith.
31 But Israel...hath not attained to the law of righteousness. (Romans 9)
During his ministry, the Lord corrected this belief by saying:
...That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:20)
We do not need to wonder what the Lord would say of his modern feigned followers. Predicting this situation, he said of these:
13 ...Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men.
14 Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.
15 Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? (Isaiah 29)
That “marvelous work and wonder,” among other things, is the public proclamation that one’s allegiance to God is measured by one’s outward alignment with what they inwardly believe is right, not outward alignment with traditions taught by the leaders of organized religions—men who neither know nor follow Jesus Christ and who actively teach their congregants to disobey him.
Hearken, O ye people who profess my name, saith the Lord your God; for behold, mine anger is kindled against the rebellious, and they shall know mine arm and mine indignation, in the day of visitation and of wrath upon the nations. (D&C 56:1)
Modern Christians would do well to consider the following parable taught by Jesus:
28 But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard.
29 He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went.
30 And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not.
31 Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. (Matthew 21)
A disciple of Jesus Christ is known not by his vernacular, his church attendance, or his practice of church traditions, rituals, or rites. A disciple of Christ is one who acts, desires, and thinks like Jesus.