Good Regret
Good Regret
We don't associate the word "regret" with anything "good," but God does.
As a child of the Great Depression, my mother let nothing go to waste – even when making pies. When she baked her pies, she would collect the leftover dough, flatten it, apply butter, sprinkle sugar, and make pie crust cookies. Those crumbly bits of goodness lessened the pain of waiting for the pie itself.
Pie crust cookies are easily made and easily broken. They share this in common with desperately made promises, which is why we often hear people (like Mary Poppins) respond to such promises by saying, "Well, that's a pie-crust promise: easily made and easily broken." Anyone who has dealt with small children knows of this phenomenon. It's cute to hear a child make a promise we know they can never keep in the hope of getting something they want from us. And yet, we must admit we all sound like this as we prayerfully bargain with God for the things we want from him.
Jesus told a teaching story to a group of men who were in the habit of making "pie crust promises" to God. They had promised God they would be more obedient to him than anyone else, but in the process, they only fooled themselves into thinking that they were far superior to all others. As a result of their "easily made and easily broken" promises, they didn't much care for the crowd that Jesus was spending time with – people whose lifestyles removed any chance of even pretending to be religious. Yet, these obvious sinners had been drawn to Jesus, drawn to his invitation to enter God's kingdom through repentance, forgiveness, and faith.
The storyline of Jesus' "The Parable of the Regretful Son" (Matthew 21) has a father asking his two sons to go and work in his vineyard. One son says, "Yes," but then ducks out from working. The other son gives his father a blunt "No," but then, regretting his refusal, goes and works. When Jesus asked the religious pie-crust-promise-makers which son did the will of his father, they admitted it was the regretful son who had said "No" but then later did what his father had asked. Jesus then replied,
"Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John [the Baptist] came to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did" (Matt. 21:31-32, NIV).
And what was "the way of righteousness" that Jesus referred to here? It's captured in John's Gospel as he tells us what John the Baptist said when he saw Jesus, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). That's exactly why those who knew full well that they were sinners were so attracted to Jesus: they trusted in his promise to take away their sins, rather than trusting in their own flaky promises of obedience.
We don't associate the word "regret" with anything "good," but God does. His arms remain extended to us, even as he waits for his invitation of love and forgiveness made to us sinners to blossom into regret and turn us around to him. Our pie-crust promises won't cut it. But when the law crumbles these promises and reveals the depth of our sins underneath, God's sure promise of the forgiveness of these sins given freely in Christ will remain for us. We should never let regret about our sin turn us away from God, for the cross tells us that God is waiting with arms open wide to embrace "regreters." To God be the glory!
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