Regret can be a powerful feeling.  And since it’s something having to do with the past, recent or otherwise, it’s just that . . . in the past.  That is not to say that it has no effect on the present.  Clearly it does!  Regret can be one of the most powerful and debilitating feelings that we experience over the course of our lives.  And it’s something that we all have to deal with.  Unless you’re two years old, you likely have regrets.  And let’s face it, if you’re only two years old, you’re probably not reading this.

The Past

Regret looks to the past.  There is something you said or did or thought that you wish you had not, and it makes you sad.  This sadness can range from the mild to the extreme(depression).  You might even wonder what this topic has to do with the Bible.  But there are two points I would like to cover.  One scriptural and the other personal(ish).

Biblical Regret

Regret is not a word that you find in the Bible too often.  In Gen. 6:6, depending on your translation, it states that God regretted ever creating people.  This was because their every thought had turned to evil.   The passage even states that God was very troubled by all of this.  This is one of the few times, if not the only time, that this amount of regret, especially on God’s part, is expressed in scripture.  Later, God regretted making Saul king(he was the first king of Israel).  But what about people’s regret?

Regret By People

In II Cor. 7:8-10, Paul tells the church in Corinth that even if his first letter to them(I Corinthians) caused them sorrow, he did not regret writing it and sending it to them.  He did go forward and say just a little more about a different kind of regret.  In verse 10, he states that godly sorrow causes repentance which leads to salvation.  Repentance is a “turning away” from something.  In this case, godly sorrow causes a person to repent or turn away from the sin that caused the godly sorrow in the first place.  That repentance/turning away then leads the person to salvation.  It leads to salvation because the person is turning away from the sin that caused them to separate themselves from God.  Paul proceeds to state that this godly sorrow does not lead to regret.  After all, why would you regret something that reunites you with God(i.e. salvation)?

There is a sense in which there could be regret, as in you regret that you did the thing that caused the godly sorrow.  But I think Paul is making a different point here.  He is telling us that we do not have to regret that thing we did that caused the godly sorrow.  By that, I mean that we do not need to let it fester and bring us down.  Since that sin is forgiven and we are reunited with God(salvation), there is nothing to ruminate upon.  The past is the past.  Leave it there.  This is not to say that we view it as “no big deal” or that we do not learn from it.  But we do not dwell on it.  God has forgiven us.  We need to forgive ourselves, too.

Personal Regret

This is much harder to deal with.  Personal regret could be something regarding sin or something not regarding sin.  I will attempt to deal with the kind that does NOT regard sin, since Paul already addressed that in II Cor. 7:10.

As we go through life, we do things that we view as unfortunate decisions in our past.  The longer we live, the more opportunities we have to create more things to regret in the past.  The longer we live, the more wisdom we attain(hopefully) and therefore realize there are more things we SHOULD regret.  But what do we do with this regret?

The Answer

I think we have to view this regret the same way that Paul views regret regarding sin.  We don’t hold on to it.  We let it go.  It can’t help us.  It can only hurt us.  And when we have anything like that in our lives, we need to jettison it.  Period.  That does not mean that we ignore the fact that it happened.  It did happen, but we can’t change the past.  All we can do it learn from it.  So let’s do that.  Let’s learn from our mistakes, without dragging them around like a massive ball and chain that keeps us from growing closer to God and to each other.