Sin & the Cure: Repentance

One of the lessons in the movie Oppenheimer is that the man – indeed the team of scientists – come to realize that the weapon they had created for good purpose is, in fact the destroyer of their collective (and our nation’s) morality. They had created an ultimate sin.

Everything that followed was a sincere attempt to limit that sin: nuclear proliferation treaties, SALT I and SALT II treaties, attempts to stop other nations’ acquisition of nuclear weapons, and, never least, stockpiling of atom bombs to present mutual annihilation as an end game to be avoided at all costs. Mutual destruction game-playing is tantamount to saying, “My sin can be greater than yours, best we do not sin at all.” But sin it remains.

You may ask, and historians have done so: Why do humans, who learn just how terrible such weapons are, carry on with plans that they know will be absolutely destructive? Knowing what is right and doing the opposite is sinful, deliberate sin. The Bible, Old Testament and New, have this exact definition of sin: the evil I know better than to do, I keep on doing.

To overcome sin, and sinful acts, there is only one recourse: change. And change can only come about with honesty, admitting that we do know better than to repeat a sin, that we want, deep down inside, not to be sinful. That process of conquering our sinful habits is called repentance. Repentance is changing one’s mind in order to see differently, see beyond the sins one perpetrates.

Repentance is a process: stopping the evil that one knows better than to do, the evil sin that one keeps on doing, but has to stop. As a nation, a whole nation, we have to turn back away from such sin, we need to repent. And help those who want to repent, not turn them away.

Oppenheimer learned this lesson, he repented, turned back to moral ground, fought to stop the evil he had unleashed. So too we as a nation have to turn away from the evil we know better than to do, yet keep on doing. In the last eight years, good people have undertaken to support and further falsehoods that they know better than to condone — but keep on doing so with blind passion. Believing falsehoods, condoning criminality, professing to be non-racist, non-discriminatory, whilst denying the laws of the nation and attacking the enforcers of those laws, supporting racism and openly discriminating against fellow Americans — these are all perfect definitions of sin — precisely because all our people do know better, are privately or in secret better, but keep on openly sinning regardless.

Almost half of our country needs to repent, cast off their sins, and in that repentance reattach themselves to the principle, self-evident, found in the moral backbone of our nation in that document headed with: “We the People...” This is a nation where all people are created equal, whether Hispanic, Asian, Anglo, European, African American, of Native Tribes, whatever religion or sexual persuasion, and that all and each of these people have fundamental rights, such as liberty, free speech, freedom of religion, due process of law, and freedom of assembly.

It is time for all Americans to repent and, thereby, heal the nation.

Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.