Repentance in Utopia

M. Scott Peck wrote in one of his books that people with neurosis make themselves miserable with feelings of guilt, apprehension, and all manners of psychological burden; and that people with psychosis make other people around them miserable by building walls of egotistical stones that shut out feelings of conscience, compassion, and empathy. Utopia is not a place where there are no more problems in daily life; it is just a place where problems are manageable and people live in harmony, with each other and with nature. A key to that harmony is forgiveness, not just in the big sins, but just as important, in the daily inevitable annoyances, the small stuff. Instead of sweating the small stuff, Ben Franklin struggled to live a peaceful life in good terms with everyone. That's why he was a diplomatic success in France, and managed to provide the nascent American colonies with much needed political, and more poignantly, the financial backing to raise a new nation. If he had been easily offended by the little snobbishness in the French court, America and the world would not be the same today.

If forgiveness is so freely given, why then is repentance necessary? Indeed, is repentance necessary? As so often happens, nature's remarkable symmetry is illustrated vividly in the need for repentance, not to gain forgiveness from others, by for our own redemption. (The symmetry is found in that the benefits from both forgiveness and repentance are inwardly directly to the self, even though the acts of both forgiveness and repentance are directed outwards to others.) As someone once said, it is maddness to expect a different result by doing the same thing. We cannot change the conditions in our lives when we continue to do the same things over and over. The ozone layer would not heal itself if the world did not come together in one moment of international goodwill borne of urgency to ratify the Montreal Protocol to change world wide behavior towards the use of flourocarbon chemicals. Although heaven rains down on both the good and bad alike, only the hard-working farmers will reap a bountiful harvest.

Christ's sermon on the mount has often puzzled me. It seems counter-intuitive that the poor in spirit are blessed, instead of the joyous and happy. Then M. Scott Peck's observation occurred to me, and an epiphany! Only those poor in spirit, miserable neurotics with a weak ego would feel the need to change, to repent, to make new their lives. The self-satisfied egotistical complacent ones are those lazy ones in Christ's parables, caught off-gaurd by the master's return. Although we are allowed to be happy, as the late great John Paul II had said to the youth of the world, we are also to balance that happiness with caution, with ever diligent wisdom, to be harmless as doves, but wise as scorpions, ever watchful for the birds that come to snatch away the seeds, the rain and wind that washes away the foundation.

Just as China during the middle ages was caught off-gaurd by the diligent western renaissance, those who believe themselves perfect and need not change, will be caught by the proverbial tortoise which stride slowly but steadily to improve themselves, by changing a little bit at a time. Utopia is not a place where everything is perfect, but a place where everyone is continually changing to become more perfect, by whatever definition they feel most appropriate in their own mind, according to their own conscience: To each his own.

As it is said in one of the prophets, the man who has been righteous all his life is still a sinner as soon as he commits one sin, while the sinner who has been sinning all his life is still made righteous as soon as he repents and does what is right. The same sentiment is found in Buddhism. In today's language, it isn't where you've been that matters, but in what direct you are going. In utopia, everyone is going in the same direction, according to their own internal GPS.