One of the theological words that has all but disappeared from the Christian vocabulary . . .

One of the theological words that has all but disappeared from the Christian vocabulary is the word “penance”—meaning, “making restitution for one’s sins.”  In other words, once we have confessed the error of our ways, and received God’s forgiveness, the next step is to commit ourselves to living differently.  Otherwise, we are no different than a hamster spinning on a wheel.  We sin and are forgiven, we sin and are forgiven, and round and round we go, expending a whole lot of energy, but never really moving forward.

Penance was the church’s way of helping people get off that hamster wheel.  Indeed, in the Roman Catholic tradition, it was eventually elevated to sacramental status, because it was usually a priest suggesting how you could start moving in a new direction.  After you confessed your sins to the priest, he would tell you what you now needed to do—not in order to be forgiven, but in order to turn your life around.

Unfortunately, the practice was also ripe for abuse, and the Reformers of the Sixteenth Century were surely right when they objected to how “penance” had basically been turned into a revenue stream for the Church.  However, in the process of correcting that practice, I sometimes wonder whether we inadvertently threw the baby out with the bath!

Too often, I think, Christians view forgiveness as a giant eraser on the blackboard of our sinful lives.  That is, we receive God’s pardon, and then go right back to living the same way that we did before.  But as Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out, that attitude cheapens the very gift of grace that makes forgiveness possible in the first place.  Forgiveness is not a stopping point; it is a starting point.  It is God’s gift to those of us who wish to begin life anew—this time by moving in a different direction!