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No Regrets?
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
James 4:8-10
"I have no regrets." "Live life without regrets." "There are no such things as regrets, only lessons."
Surely, you've heard similar sentiments. I have a tough time explaining exactly why, but I've always bristled at such statements. I think the reason may be the implication that nothing in our lives is explicitly or objectively wrong.
You see, if an experience is merely painful but not wrong, then it's not a cause for regret because you likely learned a lesson. In such a world without right and wrong, there should be no regrets because we are always wiser after the fact, after the pain. In real life, however, actions can carry an objective characteristic of "rightness."
In the fourth chapter of James, the Holy Spirit is rebuking Christians for the corruption of their hearts leading them astray. In the passage quoted above, we see the physical manifestation of what we call regret: misery, mourning, gloom, and weeping. God says regret is a good thing. It's not a way of life, but it's an appropriate response to the acknowledgement of sin.
I can't help but think of the rebuke Paul also had for the church in Corinth in 1 Cor 5:1-2.
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.
Arrogance is Satan's tonic for the wounded conscience. Arrogance allows us to sweep away the pain of guilt without experiencing the pruning and molding of humility. In short, it doesn't heal anything; it just dulls the pain. And isn't it really arrogance that calls the fruit of sin wisdom ("no regrets, only lessons")? After all, that's what caught Eve; the fruit was desirable to make one wise. Frankly, I can't fathom a regret weightier than Eve's nor can I imagine her ever saying she had no regrets.
All of us should learn from our mistakes, and we should also mourn over our sins. Don't allow the world to convince you that these two activities are mutually exclusive. How long do we mourn, though? Until we have confessed, repented, and been forgiven by God.
We all have something to regret because we've all sinned, whether or not our conscience convicts us of that truth. So, will you choose arrogance as your anesthetic, or will you accept the remedy to sin and guilt?
