Why Regret Anything?

What is the point of regret? It’s easy for me to identify specific regrets, but harder to see how they help me.

I sometimes regret how I talked to others, and the extreme skepticism I directed at them in my words and actions as a child.

I sometimes regret how I spent time and money on entertainment, instead of self-improvement–particularly after picking up the pencil and drawing again for the first time in decades. What might I have been able to do if I hadn’t given it up in high school?

If nothing else, I realize (again) that I had fun drawing. Plus, my kids like my cartoons. Still, I can’t shake the feeling  that I might have been or done something more if I’d stuck with it.

The same can be said of my running routine. For the first time in a decade, I have resumed a regular discipline of jogging. What if I’d never quit? Would being healthier have transformed my young-adulthood?

Past Choices, Present Opportunities 

“What if” scenarios are the basic currency of regret. But they are also unknowable and deeply frustrating. 

I could ask, in light of the fact that I no longer actively use German, or teach about cultures that do: “What if I had studied something other than German?” 

The answer: who knows? I wouldn’t have met some dear friends, or perhaps even my wife of nearly ten years, but maybe I would have a greater income and more employment opportunities.

Better, perhaps, to focus on what is before me. And yet, I don’t want my past to have been for naught.

The Bible and Regretting our Personal Past 

Still, when it comes to regret, I don’t believe the Bible focuses on the details of career and personal achievement in society.

Instead, it seems to me that the Bible focuses on regret in the sense of moral regret.

Careers and majors are morally neutral for the most part: an accountant or a professor can make moral or immoral decisions on the job. A rich or poor person, a famous leader or unknown worker, can do God’s will. The attitude driving our choice of career is more important than what we do for a living.

Colossians 3:5-8 speaks to this moral dimension: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.”

Paul reminds readers that they used to live in immorality, under God’s wrath, and this has two effects: 

  • It reminds us we are not superior to other people, having also done wrong.
  • It reminds us of the destructiveness of ourprevious lifestyles.

These reminders may well produce regret about our past or present, but they are intended to prompt transformation: who wants to live a sleazy, self-serving life, in the long run?

I am tempted to look at others and say: “If only he would stop overeating. Or: “If only this other guy wouldn’t let his anger get the better of him!” 

What I should say is: “I used to be like that, and can be–even today!” And, I could recognize current struggles: ” If only I would stop looking at more things to buy. If only I would stop scheming how to afford them. I would stop being covetous of others.”

Regret as a Substitute for Transformation 

Yet, Paul doesn’t simply want us to remember our past and feel regret, and he certainly doesn’t want us to feel smug superiority toward others.

Rather, we need to use regret to prompt us to move on: “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).

In experiencing regret, it is not enough to consider regret itself to be a fulfillment of our moral duty. How many times did I apologize–even sincerely–for a behavior or my words, only to repeat the same failing? 

I have repeatedly expressed regret to my wife that I ate too much dessert, exercised too little, lost my temper with my kids, hadn’t written my book that I purportedly wanted to shop around for publication, and hadn’t practiced my drawing skills to illustrate my children’s story.  There’s a whole other litany of regrets about my class I teach: things I meant to change that I never got around to. 

In many cases, regret becomes a substitute for change instead of an impetus for transformation. 

“I meant to do that, but you know…” becomes a code passed between people who’ve resigned themselves to stasis and slow decline. The inertia of our past indecision or complacency enables our future complacency.

Hence, the Apostle Paul’s command in Philippians “Forgetting that which is behind…” We must forget about the past ways of coping with disappointment, the past deviant ways of finding pleasure, and the past ways of killing time while waiting for the next big thing. 

More than that, we have to replace our past behaviors and choices with a new, and worthy, goal: “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Take Action

The path of least resistance is not fulfilling in the long run. We can take care to spend our future hours in a better way.

What does that look like?

  • It’s not a legalistic checklist.
  • It is a reflective consideration of what is good to do.
  • It is taking action on some of those points.
  • It is not getting stuck on, and abusing oneself, for current or past bad choices.

Still confused on where to start? Pick one thing and do it, as you have the opportunity. Right now, as I write this, I plan to go out and put air in the tires of our car. It’s a small thing that my wife and I have delayed for a whole week. Then, I’ll take the next action and “press on.”

Taking action is seldom heroic or glamorous, which is why I find it less fulfilling. There’s nothing pretty about most of my failed drawings, but they teach me how to do better when I reflect on them and change my technique.

That’s what I feel we are called to in life: reflect on our regrets and change our way of living.

We have to replace our past behaviors and choices with a new, and worthy, goal: "the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:14). Click To Tweet