“Those who return to God in humility and repentance find restoration.”
You sit in quiet reflection. One part longing for redemption. Another resists, plagued by doubts, desires, and the pull of your own will.
A question arises: Am I truly repentant for my sins, and do I genuinely seek redemption?
You come into contact with your inherent contradictions – one part of you desires what aligns with your deepest values, while another acts on impulses that oppose them. There lies a split that seems impossible to fully reconcile.
Surely, there is part of you that is genuinely repentant, that seeks redemption. Yet, you know there have been times you have strayed. You recognize the strength of the forces within you – your emotions, your goals, your hunger, your sex drive. You acknowledge that these forces are not you, per se and ask: If it is I who allows these forces to guide my actions, to what degree do I do so voluntarily… to what extent is that still me?
You understand that each day, you are called upon to make a continuous series of decisions about where you turn your attention and set your aim. What will I let guide me? Is it the voice that integrates all the lessons and experiences I’ve gathered? The voice I might describe as my connection not merely to what I think is highest, but to what is truly highest?
This leads you to another question: Is man limited so much by his ability to comprehend or his ability to amass the knowledge that makes comprehension possible?
An answer comes: “You are bound by both. There is far more than you could ever know, and the complexity of the whole is beyond your limited comprehension.”
Man may long to integrate the wisdom of God into his being, but does that not place before him the greatest temptation? Perhaps the fundamental temptation – the desire to equate himself with God, even to surpass Him. This is the sin of pride.
But what happens when a man seeks to integrate God’s wisdom into his being? Does he humbly receive it, or does he begin to believe it is his? Here lies the greatest danger – the temptation not only to seek God but to become Him.
It was the serpent who tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – the one fruit which God forbade. Believing she could bear the weight of such knowledge, she ate of the fruit, and gave it to Adam. The serpent is Lucifer, Satan. Pride is Luciferian – it was his desire to usurp God’s throne on high when he said in his heart:
“I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high… I will make myself like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:13-14)
In Inferno, Dante places betrayal at the lowest circle of Hell. Is pride, then, the ultimate betrayal? Lucifer, in his arrogance, presumed he could equate himself with God – even ascend His throne. “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18) In his pride, Lucifer experiences the ultimate fall, plunging through heaven, cast into the lowest depths, and locked frozen in hell’s core, where even Hell’s fiercest fires could not melt the weight of his sin.
What does this ultimately mean? That while you may be called to seek God’s wisdom, to claim it as your own is to do so at your greatest peril.
What, then, leads to repentance and redemption? The opposite of pride – humility.
“Those who return to God in humility and repentance find restoration.”
They do not claim God’s wisdom as their own. Instead, they engage in the act of continual return – aligning themselves with the good, even when different parts of them pull in conflicting directions.
Repentance is not about achieving a state of all-knowing, permanent perfection – it is about turning back to God each time you fall. True repentance is choosing to return to your highest aim, despite knowing your fallibility, despite knowing you will need to seek repentance and redemption again.
True redemption is found in the act itself: Turn back to God, no matter how often you fall, for to return is not weakness, but the very path to redemption.
Andres E. Findlay 
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