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| Making amends for mistakes is more than saying ‘sorry’ |
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| Opinion | |||
| Written by Jan Sykes | |||
| Wednesday, 30 December 2009 08:00 | |||
Is only one day always enough to start a New Year afresh? Ever notice that other cultures celebrate more days?  Those of Jewish religion, for example, take ten days to start their new year, starting with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). It gives them time to repent of their wrongs from the old year and begin with a clean slate in the new one. Perhaps this New Year’s, we Gentiles could follow their pattern. Haven’t we spoken words we should retract? Broken something we should repair? Borrowed something we should return? Abandoned someone we should find again? Betrayed someone we should reinstate? Many of us make New Year’s resolutions, which might help the future, but doesn’t really fix the past. Others of us, however, really try to address our former transgressions. The trouble is, our notion of making reparation is usually to simply go to the person, admit we were wrong, say we are sorry, and then ask them to forgive us. Often we throw in sincere tears to prove our genuine remorse. That’s fine enough if the violation was nothing more than ill-advised words. However, if we committed a deed which caused harm, then we must offer a corresponding corrective deed to maintain our credibility. Otherwise, our verbally accepting the blame is nothing more than a windy good start. Not only is our victim still damaged, our verbal apology typically burdens them with doing something for us. “Will you forgive me?” we implore. Aren’t we (the perpetrators) the beneficiaries of that kind of repentance? We’re off the hook, and the victim remains injured. Any wonder that the victim still feels reluctant to go have a beer with us? If we need to mend a relationship this New Year’s, let’s do it right. Forget the tears; forget the Vaudevillian theatrics; forget the eating of crow. If we are truly contrite, we must do our best to restore the person we wounded. If we snuck out of our apartment without paying rent, we need to send a check to the landlord for not only the back rent, but for the time the apartment was vacant. If we took credit for a colleague’s project at work and got his promotion, we need to let the boss know the promotion belonged to our colleague instead. If we trash our friend’s house at his party, we must clean it back up … and send his wife flowers. If we unjustly fire an employee, then we must not only pay him his back salary, but continue to pay his salary until he finds a new job. The Jewish have specific prescriptions as to which good deeds will correct which bad deeds. For example, “If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it; he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep” (Exodus 22:1). A Jewish person who fails to immediately atone for his offenses has another chance during the nine days of New Years to reconcile them before he faces God in the synagogue on Yom Kippur. We Gentiles don’t have written instructions on such minutiae. So we have to wing our acts of contrition, and are apt to get them wrong. People may forgive us whether we repent properly or not. But they sure won’t reinstate us to the same level of intimacy if our deeds never match our words. Words without corresponding deeds are evidence of a shortage of integrity. Therefore, people are wise to not trust us again. So why don’t we give the Jewish method a try this New Year?
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