Repentance

Bad Repentance

Is a negative repentance experience a good motivator for righteous living?

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Kim Siever

Queer Mormon poet with radical political views. I have been married 27 years, and we have 6 children. Sunday school president. Served in the Utah Provo Mission.

6 thoughts on “Bad Repentance”

  4. I don’t see how that list of characteristics would differentiate it from a “good repentance experience,” which might contain any or all of the same elements.

    But maybe that statement is just my answer to your question.

    In any case, I think a “good” repentance experience is one that brings about a true change of heart and invokes the power of the Atonement, whereas a “bad” repentance experience is one that doesn’t do those things. Or in other words, a “bad” experience is one where the penitent hasn’t really repented.

  5. A positive repentance experience may emphasis love, empathy and forgiveness.

    I’m not sure negative always equals bad and positive always equals good in this case.

  6. Repentence surely involves aspects of the bad and the good, right? If you didn’t feel guilt, sorrow, etc, why are you repenting in the first place? In my experience, all repentence starts out because of negative experiences. But your losses are more than made up for.

    As for me, I had a fairly serious repentence scenario that may have been seen as bad. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say, I was attending BYU on a scholarship, got kicked out mid-year, had to move back home and lost my scholarship. All this led up to my not serving a mission, feeling a total pariah in my homeward and really awkward situations with a huge variety of people.

    Did these negative situations help me live more righteously? Sure they did. After I returned to BYU, I tried to (and mostly did) live better and continue to tap into the really crappy feelings to motivate me to keep from sin five years down the road. The loss of the scholarship still rankles a little bit, though.

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