Confronting Ourselves With Ourselves

There is a very old subject that has been distasteful to every generation, and which every generation has had to reckon with no matter how distasteful it was. It isn’t a popular subject in fact, speaking of it at all is commonly though to be quite old-fashioned. Bluntly, it is the question of repentance. Perhaps current practice would suggest that we sugar-coat the subject, call it by some other name, dress it up for modern consumption but this is no time for dodging issues, and repentance is a thing to be reckoned with. Perhaps there are still those who want to know what it is that we have need to repent of. For answer to this each man should examine his own soul and let his own conscience tell him. And if his conscience isn’t active enough to use himself as an example, let him compare the conduct of his neighbors with the commandments of God and the established rules of life. It is readily understandable that we would rather not face these things, but there comes a time when confronting ourselves with ourselves is mandatory a time when a man must concede the error of his ways. And if, at such a time, he repents, not merely for the expediency of the moment, but if he cleans out his soul in acknowledging his shortcomings, in asking forgiveness, and departs altogether from his former ways if he has learned the spirit of humility and forsakes the spirit of boasting if he can say and mean it”Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me”then is the time when the battle is on its way toward being won and not before. The subject of repentance may be distasteful to this generation, as it has been to all others but we must reckon with it.