Repentance is the Ultimate Humanism
Full recontextualization of the past addresses our wholeness
Repentance is the most humane idea possible. It says the present can change the past and totally transform its meaning.
For those who believe that something like the scientific definition of matter is all that exists, the past is not real beyond its immediate pushes and pulls on the present, and when these pushes and pulls affect certain brain states, that is the most “meaning” we can ascribe to the past. But even for many who believe in spirit, the deed itself remains irrevocably evil. At best, evil becomes the occasion for good. It was walking on the wrong path that led us to the right one, and perhaps this is a gracious and happy thing.
This, still, to my mind, isn’t quite Reish Lakish’s radicalism on Yoma 86b:
Didn’t Reish Lakish himself say: Great is repentance, as one’s intentional sins are counted for him as merits…and all his deeds, even his transgressions, will become praiseworthy? The Gemara reconciles: This is not difficult: Here, when one repents out of love, his sins become like merits; there, when one repents out of fear, his sins are counted as unwitting transgressions.
The Talmud seems to say that not only is the past real, not only can we reorient ourselves from the wrong path to the right one, not only can we return to love of G-d, but that this act literally transforms intentional sins into merits; one’s transgressions become one’s praise!
I like to take the Talmud at face value when it appears to radically diverge from everything else, on the general principle that Judaism is not meant to be and never has been everything else, and this could even be a good thing. In this case, it is not arbitrary pro-Jewish radicalism (though I enjoy that too), but is connected to universally recognized doctrinal differences, indeed, to the “rabbinic loophole.” The operative distinction is this: if G-d Himself chooses the Divine Commandments with His own free choice, then transgression and merit are not ultimately embedded in a rational teleology. There is a totally transcendent dimension to what appear to be mere worldly acts. This means, per the Chassidic understanding of Judaism, two things that at first appear contradictory:
Sins are rejected more absolutely than reason ever could.
Yet G-d, transcending even His own choice, can re-receive them in love.
A Jew eating a cheeseburger remains a sin in the Law, and no rational argument or reduction to abstract principle can ever make it not a sin, because the Law is not the instantiation of an abstraction but the actual Will of G-d. This is deeply Jewish. But in the drama of soul and G-d, the act’s place is rewritten. The distance it causes becomes longing for G-d, in love. The longing becomes ascent. The sin itself becomes another step on the path toward G-d. This is no mere psychology or description of the individual’s journey, but an objective spiritual reality, because the “drama of the soul and G-d” is more real than the world, the soul is larger than the universe, and the universe is only real to the extent of its participation in that drama.
Since the Jewish soul (and certainly the collective Jewish soul)’s subjective relationship with G-d is not merely subjective at all but the deepest objectivity and most verifiable truth, “sins becoming merits” is not freedom from judgment but the freedom to be judged anew. The closer you get to G-d, the more you care about not eating cheeseburgers the way He cares about it. The mission becomes even more absolute and radical.
This is why the Zohar says that even the righteous must repent, because it’s not merely turning from the wrong path to the right one, but a radical recontextualization of reality limited only by the depth of closeness to G-d, which is, of course, limitless. In the end, the whole concept loses all semblance of the inhumane, even the impersonal “objective standard.” Repentance re-grounds objectivity in the G-d who is beyond the distinction of objectivity and subjectivity. Human beings also, mysteriously and without good excuse, bridge this distinction–we exist both inwardly/privately/unshareably and also externally/communicably/factually. Therefore, only repentance addresses us in our wholeness. It is the most humane idea possible.