Not too Late

Tanya Tucker was singing about a most common experience: friends had warned us against dating that person. He is nothing but trouble, we are told. She will break your heart; don’t do it. He is bad news, temper like a yellow jacket and strikes like the snake that he is. But, for reasons we can’t explain even to ourselves, we have already lost our heart to them. That’s why she sings: “Well, it’s a little too late to do the right thing now.”

Hooked on pot before we knew it, took that first drink, lost our virginity, turned in a research paper that we bought off the internet, or even in blind rage killed our husband’s lover. Yes, it’s a little too late to do the right thing now. What’s done can’t be undone. But not really; there is more to it than that.

Considerate thinking--another term for the otohbotoh dialectic–says that we always are in an on-the-other-hand situation. It may be a little too late to do what was the right thing to do at the time, but this time is not that time. The clock has moved on, maybe even the calendar. We did the wrong thing, but that’s in the past. “Now” means that we are in the present.

In the aftermath of any mistake, we have choices available in the now. Something is the right thing to do now. Find it and do it. Like Andrei Gromyko, I have gotten a lot of mileage out of the old Russian proverb: “No matter how long you’ve been traveling the wrong road, turn around.” We face a new set of choices. In the present, in the now, we can turn around and move toward that which is the right way for the now.

This is what Christian repentance is about. We have seen the destruction our habitual philosophy of life led to. We have understood the world one way, have believed that way was the truth, we’ve followed some particular mental map of reality and found it to be a dead-end. Repentance means that we can choose to be reoriented, begin to walk the way that leads to life, believe that Jesus has Reality mapped out right.

No, it is not too late to do the right thing now.