Mar 30 2007
Who decides when repentence is real?
Yesterday someone named Mike posted the following on my post called I don’t get it.
FYI, Clinton confessed to his church in 1998 and repented as reported by Baptist Press http://bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=25273
That means no more Clinton infidelity comments or jokes, right?
I read the article and I think Mike has a good point. According to the Baptist Press article President Clinton expressed repentance to his church. Here is what Rex Horne President Clinton’s former pastor said:
In October 1998, Clinton wrote a letter to the 4,500-member congregation, asking for forgiveness. Horne at the time told the Arkansas Baptist news magazine that the president had expressed repentance and sorrow. He said he “sensed an affirmation of the president’s request for forgiveness” from “the great majority of the people” attending the service when the letter was read.
Horne has never publicly disclosed the contents of Clinton’s letter to the Little Rock church, citing it as a personal matter between a pastor and his congregation.
Many pastors and other religious leaders have fallen in recent years. Naturally most followers of Jesus want to be forgiving. But does that only include those in the “Evangelical” or “Religious Right” community? I admit I’ve been hard on President Clinton in the past. My hockey stick is somewhat bigger when it comes to liberal democrats.
Was President Clinton playing his pastor and his church? I don’t know. But I feel I need to give him the same benefit of Grace that I would to Ted Haggard or Rick Ousley. Who knows if someone is truly repentant? I think only God knows for sure. But as followers of Jesus we are to keep on forgiving even if it is someone we disagree with.
Matthew 18:21
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times
I guess I have seventy more hockey sticks to pull out.
What do you think?
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14 responses so far
When I think of the Clintons, I recall my favorite line from J. R. Ewing of Dallas: “Integrity os great! Once you can fake that, you can fake anything.”
Here’s an interesting point,
NIV reads Seventy-seven but
NASB / NLT and others say seventy times seven (490. Really?)
Seems the point is that by the time we get to that point we’ll be thinking “what’s one more?” not “OK, Now you’ve done it.”
From your comments, it seems it’s easier for you to forgive a republican than a democrat. Why?
Kevin, my point had less to do with Pres. Clinton than it had to do to point out how easy it is to inject bias into who we forgive and restore right away, and who we continue to, for lack of better term, “condemn”.
I think your point is to be consistent. You can be suspicious of hand in the cookie jar repentance for all, or extend grace to all who ask forgiveness and claim repentance.
I think the post you had about the sex offender desiring to fellowship at a church contains a clue to how I feel. He was upfront and brutally revealing to the church, without trying to pretty up who he was.
Whenever someone uses neutral terms for sin, or makes public confessions confessing to a lapse when the sin is shown to be practice, I’m suspicious.
Look, I’m not owed anything from some of these fellows; they are not my pastor or accountable to me in any way. But if you want to put your confession, or some similar statement trying to reduce the “damage” out in the public domain, don’t dissemble. If the only way for a person to be completely honest with those who he is accountable to is to do so in private…THEN KEEP IT PRIVATE.
Kevin,
If you will quit holding that hockey stick in I’ll pull them all out.
You’ve got a long way to go, true. So do I. We all do. That doesn’t excuse us, but at least you’re aware.
When the Bible says to be careful about where you stand, in case you fall. I think that God is not beyond leaving us to our own devices, and allowing us to fall into the same type of sin that we are so critical of others for. Maybe worse, we look at what is really inside of our hearts, and we realize that we are every bit as bad as what we perceived Bill Clinton to be, only we try to hide it from the world, which makes us hypocrites.
I agree. It’s not fair that the first assumption is that Clinton might have been trying to play his church. It wouldn’t be that way if/when Rick Ousley repents to his congregation; Christians will assume that he’s sincere about wanting to change and regretting what he’s done. How anyone can honestly believe that Bill Clinton didn’t regret his mistake is beyond me, as is the unbelievable hatred of the Clintons by some people on the political right. It just seems really irrational. (To be clear, I’m not counting you in that category, Kevin.) It reminds me of what my mother always said: you don’t have to like everyone, but you do have to love everyone.
So.. the point here would be that we can understand and accept the repentance of those we “like” or are in our “tribe” or “party” but have a much tougher time accepting it from those we dislike, or are our perceived antagonists.
So, the ancient words of Christ telling us to pray for those who spitefully use us, and our enemies are to teach us to reach out in Grace in a way similar to the way God reaches out to us. That would be when we are separated and an “enemy” of God He gave us the Grace of repentance.
I am not there yet, but Lord, make it so in my heart.
Kevin:
I think the answer’s pretty simple. It’s the sorts of people who are supposed to be deciding.
One sort I can think of is those in spiritual authority over them. Like President Clinton’s pastor.
Another is those to whom someone is spiritually accountable, like you are to your congregation.
Then there are folks like family.
Other than that, I don’t think it’s anyone else’s place to decide. Nor to require or demand. Otherwise, Romans 14:4 is pointless.
Just a thought.
A person confesses to his church…a public declaration of what has been done. He/she then repents…reverses the activity that he/she has confessed to. In the case of Clinton there has not been any credible evidence, since his confession, that he is involved in the confessed sin. He has repented.
One of points in this is to note that you cannot say you repent, it has no meaning, you must change to have repented.
Paul
Great discussion, and great topic.
The “evangelical right wing” isn’t really living up to the “root word”–evangel–good news.
If you aren’t “extreme right wing” there is NO good news for you…or at least that’s what I keep hearing.
I’m tired of the “left wing” and “right wing”—I want to be a biblical Christian.
President Clinton has confessed and repented….that’s alot more than some of the folks who fill our pews…
Or our pulpits….
will ever do.
From what I heard Clinton spoke at the Baptist college in Arkansas the other day. Predictably, a number of Arkansas pastors got all up in arms about it. I’m forced to wonder how many Baptist colleges in the past 5 years have had a former President of the United States come speak to their students. I’m forced to try and wrap my mind around how someone could consider this a bad thing. And I’m forced to wonder when churchmen will focus on the gospel and not the republican party platform.
Is it too strong to call it what it is? Politics of any stripe are not the hope of the world. I despair over the future of our convention when we show every ambition of being an auxillary for the Republican party and not the peculiar people who belong to Jesus. I believe that Clinton is a brother who is trying to make things right in his life and in his marriage. I believe that Rick Ousley is a brother who is trying to make things right in his life. Both men are owed a debt of love by me. Both men are owed the benefit of the doubt by me, in just the same way as the people in my church who are alcoholics, etc.
As I read the new testament, I see that Jesus picked as his disciple, Levi–the tax collector and collaborator with the Romans. Jesus also picked Simon the Zealot–the man who despised the Roman occupation with every fiber of his being. If these two men could be hand picked followers of Jesus, then how is it that republicans are “godly” enough for our churches, but democrats can’t be “godly” enough for our churches?
But then, I’m a democrat, so I may not love Jesus or something.
Do we edify or help anything by talking critically of someone who has fallen short of God’s glory? That is something worth asking. Isn’t it God’s job to convict, correct, and bring someone to repentance? And, isn’t it our job to love as we want to be loved, to forgive, to have compassion, never to let anything unwholesome come out of our mouths, to give, to live for others??
[...] and himself to consider whether they are being pharisaical about their approach to things. In a recent post, he questioned how one can decide when repentance is real. It is worth the time to read the post [...]