43. What is honest repentance?
When a person does something wrong, he feels guilty. We make a mistake as a result of succumbing to emotions. But emotions do not last for long. When emotions subside, conscience emerges and when this happens, one must not neglect to pay heed to one’s inner voice.
The Creator has placed a special feature in human psyche—and that is what is called ‘repentance’. Repentance is a wonderful means of mercy for human beings. For those who repent, the Quran says:
God will change the evil deeds of such people into good ones. (Quran 25:70)
The transformation that this Quranic verse refers to takes place if sincere repentance wells up inside a person after he does something wrong. A positive aspect of repentance is that it engenders a strong determination in a person to reform himself, and, after having done something wrong, to firmly walk on the path of goodness thereafter. It is this positive enthusiasm that follows from repentance that changes an evil deed into a good one.
If you make a mistake that arouses anger in another, but then you repent and say, ‘Please forgive me, I was wrong,’ this will certainly cause the aggrieved person to undergo a change of heart. Such an apology will, on the one hand, inculcate positivity in your soul and, on the other hand, it will promote a culture of love among people you are living with. In family life as well as social life, untoward events are unavoidable. Such happenings sour relations and create distance between people. The best solution is to repent sincerely. Do not wait for others to take the lead.
If, after doing an evil deed, one chooses to continue on the same path, it makes a person even more inclined to evil. On the contrary, engaging in introspection would cause him to make up his mind not to indulge in evil again. If he does so, the evil deed he commits becomes a cause of leading him to goodness.
Repentance is an instrument of self-correction, initiating a process of self-assessment. This process is vital, as it enhances your intellectual calibre and leads to spiritual development. Repentance is an inner spirit, a readiness to atone for every kind of mistake.
The source of repentance is one’s conscience (zameer). It is not possible that a person does something wrong and that his conscience does not get affected by it. The only condition is that a person should be honest with his conscience so that he does not neglect the voice of his conscience. Gandhi used to say, “Thus my inner sight speaks”, and when this inner sight speaks, one must pay heed to it. There is no other criterion for sincere repentance.
