The psychology of repentance

This is what I've learnt lately: repentance is just another word for refusing to live in denial.

It's an act of turning: turning away and turning toward.

Turning away

People say there’s only one certainty in life: death. But I’d argue there’s another—our innate tendency for self-destruction.

All our lives, we are taught—or perhaps even conditioned—to act according to our best judgment, to strive for what is right, just, and kind. We make choices based on the values we hold, believing we are steering ourselves toward what is good. But whose values? Whose judgment? That, too, is up to us. We are not just given the ability to make choices; we are given the freedom to shape the very values that inform them.

And yet, despite knowing what is right, we so often do the opposite. We cling to habits, relationships, and mindsets that harm us. We abandon disciplines, practices, and principles that we know would lead to a better life.

And yet, we keep doing things we know and believe to not be good for us, and abandon things that we know are good for us.

We know we should eat well, exercise, and sleep enough. Yet we binge on junk food, skip workouts, and doom-scroll at 2 AM.

We recognize toxic patterns in friendships or romantic relationships but return to them, drawn by familiarity or fear of loneliness. Meanwhile, we neglect the people who genuinely care for us.

We understand the importance of setting boundaries, seeking therapy, or processing our emotions, but we suppress, avoid, and self-sabotage instead.

We believe in deeper purpose, yet we fill our time with distractions. We long for meaning but numb ourselves with mindless consumption.

You're probably picturing your version of self-destructive behaviors now — yes, you would have at least one.

We are not ignorant of what is good for us—we just don’t always choose it. And perhaps that is the real paradox of free will: not that we lack wisdom, but that we often reject it, even when we know better. In the school of thought (Christian theology) that I subscribe to, this is what it's often meant by 'sin.' It's simply this very inherent tendency — we want to build our own little kingdoms, indulging in our own ego that keeps screaming like a 3-year-old, "I want what I want and the world revolves around me!"

And here's what I meant but 'turning away:' turning away from choices that are self-destructive, that wound others, that pull us further from who we are meant to be.

But there's more.

Turning toward

Humans are creatures of habit (yes, I would also say: creatures of addiction, you may disagree). You latch onto one bad habit — the cure to free yourself from it is not to simply alleviate that habit — but to replace it with a better habit, so you can latch onto it.

This is why 'turning away' is not enough. Just as importantly, it is a turning toward something better. Toward wisdom, toward what is right, toward the kind of life we claim to believe in.

If you agree with me that the barrier to repentance is denial, then the opposite of repentance is not the sin itself—it is self-deception.

It is the refusal to take responsibility, the instinct to say:

“I had no choice,” 

“This just happened to me.”

"It is what it is."

"But this is just me. This is who I am."

It is the quiet, dangerous lie that convinces us that free will does not exist. That God, in His sovereignty, has somehow stripped us of agency. But if God has given us wisdom, what greater waste could there be than refusing to use it?

Step 1: Recognize the fact that you do have free will. You made a choice. And it was wrong.

Mistakes are inevitable. We stumble, we fall, we fail. But failure itself is not the thing to fear—it is failing to recognize failure, failing to take ownership, failing to turn around when the path is leading nowhere. This is why "our greatest fear should not be failure. It should be succeeding at things that do not matter" (Francis Chan)—or worse, succeeding at things that destroy us.

Step 2: Take ownership of the mistakes you've made and bear with the consequences they bring as it is just.

But the worst is this: when we start to take comfort in the very space that destroys us, just because that's the only space we've always known.

Someone (I think Adam Grant, please check) said, "It takes curiosity to learn, but it takes courage to unlearn." That's exactly what's needed: courage. Take courage in deconstructing the only realm you're comfortable with and move on.

Step 3: Take courage to rise up, and make amends for that mistake — so you don't have to let the decisions you made in your past dictate how you live your future — even when the remedies have to sting.