Volume 9, Issue 1

COLUMBIA CONFESSIONS On Repentance

Spring 2022 Vol. 9, No. 1

OUR VISION A campus that witnesses the subversive person of Jesus and accepts the reality of the Gospel.

OUR MISSION To proclaim the life and power of God’s truth to the Columbia community and beyond through diverse Christian voices and ideas.

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CONTENTS

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Repentance

An Exhortation to Repent

Ardaschir Arguelles

Ben Kelley, Rory Wilson, Harrison Riley

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16

We All Need to Repent!

George Cladis

From Loveless Apologies to Freedom-Filled Repentance Victoria Choe

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There is No “I” in Hell

The Preacher’s Confessions

Alexander Kim

Chase Chumchal

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Repentance: Despair and Faith

Perspective

Feven Negussie

Elizabeth Huang

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Absolute Restoration

Shades of a Fig Tree

Benjamin Brake

Tony Kim

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Michael Manasseh MANAGING EDITOR

Dear Reader,

Elizabeth Huang PRINT HEAD

Tony Kim BLOG HEAD

Feven Negussie DESIGN HEAD

Sandra Song WEB HEAD

Mandy Jenkins PODCAST HEAD

Tim Kinnamon PRINT

Annie Son | Ardaschir Arguelles Ben Kelley | Benjamin Brake Chase Chumchal | Elizabeth Huang Hannah Ramsey | Victoria Choe BLOG

Augustin Lacroix | Dorothy Zhang Karis Cha | Lydia Robbins Natalia Espinoza WEB

Joy He DESIGN

Annie Son | Lydia Robbins Tony Kim

As we considered what our next print issue should look like, the theme of repentance was one that deeply resonated with us.

And as we discussed further, someone brought up Columbia Confessions, a well-known Facebook group where students make anonymous posts about campus life. These posts vary greatly in topic, but they usually highlight the darkest aspects of life on campus: guilt, anxiety, depression, suicide, debauchery, and everything in between. We realized that many of these students were desperate for answers, and thus, we decided to use this print issue as an opportunity to discuss Repentance through the lens of a Columbia in need of Confession.

Repentance is not an easy subject. As Christians, we know on some level that it’s an essential component to living out our faith, but it can be difficult to carry out consistently. Additionally to nonbelievers, repenting seems like an unnecessary thing to do altogether. Yet at the same time, we know that through the repenting of our sins we draw closer to God and find hope, and it is this hope that we want to share with our campus. It is easy to quickly become overwhelmed at Columbia, from intense classes and extracurriculars, to dealing with stress culture.

Combine these with the unending chaos of New York City and the world, and very soon many students find despair. It is here where we want to meet them.

Throughout this issue, you will find a diversity of pieces that touch on different aspects of the idea of repentance, from pastoral approaches to repentance, to personal reflections and theological breakdowns. Our hope is that through these pieces, we may be able to share the reality of the Gospel. We pray that those who read it may be able to experience the joy and freedom of repenting our past and turning to Jesus.

God Bless,

PODCAST

Feven Negussie | Tina Liu Grace-Elleda Gonzalez CONTRIBUTOR

Alexander Kim | George Cladis Harrison Riley | Rory Wilson

Michael Manasseh Spring 2022

SPECIAL THANKS TO

Veritas Forum

The Witness | 5

Repentance Ardaschir Arguelles Cela est bien dit, répondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.

“All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”

—Voltaire

If the heart’s a garden, Lord, I fear To see what seeds were sometime sown Of sin and sickness, overgrown, And what rotten fruit I still hold dear.

I fear to sit in silence, Lord, And kneel in prayer to pull up weeds And plow new furrows for new seeds

By Scripture-ploughshare, Scripture-sword.

Frankly, Lord, I fear to go Where affections age like gnarled trees And weakness, wounds, and vanities, And pride — like thorns in tangles grow.

But thorns were worked into a crown For One who in a garden prayed — And there’s a Tree where He, displayed, Changed my heart to fruitful ground.

By Your strength, Father, I will start To tend the garden You’ve redeemed, For now — though I would not have dreamed It — a burning bush grows at its heart.

Ardaschir Arguelles (CC’24) is a sophomore in Columbia College studying Classics. He enjoys rugby, writing, and making occasional puns. Contact him at ardaschir.a@columbia.edu.

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An Exhortation to Repent Ben Kelley, Rory Wilson, Harrison Riley

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his world is broken. Evil people do evil things day in and day out. All that is good will pass away. In such a bleak situation, we often take comfort in the idea that we are not so bad, that we love our family, respect others, and value peace. But we are sinners too. Society’s horrors stem not from the few who are truly without a moral compass but from the many who refuse to acknowledge the fault of their morality. We have an urgent need to repent and turn to God. There is simply no room to put off this task for even a moment longer, as Christ said: “‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’” (Mark 1:15).

The grace of God empowers us to repent and be cleansed in the time before Jesus’ second coming because it “teaches us… to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present time” (Titus 2:12). In other words, the overwhelming, self-sacrificial love that Christ displayed on the Cross is the model for our own lives. This ultimate grace and the daily blessings that He showers on us are a transformative call to live in harmony with God’s law, out of a genuine desire to be with Him. Thus our task as Christians is to “take [a] stand against the devil’s schemes,” (Ephesians 6:11) fighting against every manifestation of sin in the world, especially the ‘pet sins’ of the current age and of our university.

However, we are not only rejecting the flesh but are privileged to enjoy the fruit of the Spirit, testifying to how much better God’s creation is when it is closer to its original design.

We first must have a clear idea of what the “acts of the flesh” and the “fruit[s] of the Spirit” are. The New Testament delineates these actions and characteristics in several places, one of which is in chapter five of Galatians. Here, Paul includes “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians

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5:22-23) as the fruits of the Spirit, while identifying “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21) as acts of the flesh.

Among the several acts of the flesh that Paul catalogs, sexual immorality is the first — and with good reason. These sins are destructive to our relationships because they remove love and God’s design — the very things we are called to embody — from our most intimate relationships. Our culture has developed an unhealthy obsession with sex and in the process, has perverted our view of it. Not only has sexual immorality become the norm, but being against it is considered prudish, in the case of fornication, or bigoted, in the case of homosexuality. It is even socially acceptable for one to indulge in their lust in private via pornography. As much as some Christians

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try to get around it to avoid either personal accountability or social condemnation, the Bible is extremely clear that “neither the sexually immoral… nor men who have sex with men… will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). God has a very different vision for us in the Spirit: “that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans” (1 Thessalonians 4:4-5). Those who walk in the Spirit will not be slaves to their passions, being led blindly away from God, which comes with idolizing sex, but will have control over their actions.

They will treat the gift of sex with appropriate respect, recognizing its power for good in proper use as well as its power for destruction in misuse.

Our pursuit of pleasure also makes us vulnerable to the sins of the campus “party culture” — drugs and alcohol. In Galatians 5, one of the acts of the flesh that Paul condemns

We are not judged by some human standard but by the standard of the living God, who is perfect and holy.

is drunkenness. However, notice that he does not condemn drinking alcohol outright but only using it to get drunk.

As Christians, we are to “be alert and of sober mind,” for “[y]our enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). This means that drunkenness compromises our ability to make moral decisions and disrupts our communion with the Lord by removing our ability to discern his will. Instead, we should “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18) and maintain our lucidity, following his Word at all times.

Furthermore, as students at a

prestigious Ivy League university, we are also more vulnerable to becoming consumed by a need for success. With the pressure of already high expectations, we easily lose sight of what’s important, becoming fixated on grades and achievements. Our drive for success fuels selfish ambition, creating an attitude of doing whatever it takes to get ahead, be that pushing others down or cheating. We pridefully create discord, both harming the world and giving ourselves a skewed, self-centered view of it. Yet God calls us to “value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4). It is only in a posture of humility, seeking to serve others at our own expense, that we can both be a force for good in the world and have a clear understanding of the world, for “where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice” (Proverbs 13:10).

These sins are what plague our culture and our university. Satan tempts each one of us and can be very successful. We all must reflect to consider which of these we have fallen into and how we have done so, for we can sin in very subtle ways — being annoyed with our family in Christ often springs from pride, for example. Jesus’ teaching was that sin is not just external but internal and is the result of a sinful and rebellious heart. We are all called to circumcise our hearts and to “[b]e perfect … as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mat-

thew 5:48). We are not judged by some human standard but by the standard of the living God, who is perfect and holy. This means anything that does not glorify God — whether sexual sin, partying, idolizing success, or otherwise — is impermissible. We must come before God with these sins, repent, and “set [our] minds on the things above,” walking in the Spirit and consecrating ourselves through the power present in Christ (Colossians 3:2).

As Christians at Columbia, we might be tempted to think that simply by going to church, we are walking in the Spirit. This is a very secular place, so it is natural to see any signs of religiosity as positive goods. We may want to give people the benefit of the doubt when they show signs of religious practice.

However, merely going to church is not enough. We are called to true repentance and spiritual transformation and believing that occasionally partaking in Christian practices is sufficient for our spiritual lives is to turn them into a placebo for the real issues of the heart.

If we display the “signs” of Christianity without changing our character, then we become whitewashed tombs, beautiful but filled with death, like the Pharisees (Matthew 23:27).

The Scriptures offer a very different vision of what religious practice ought to look like and why we ought to do it.

Instead of endeavoring to signal our religiosity to others, we should take part in rituals to deepen our relationship

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“

Scripture is clear: our tendency is to be lovers of pleasure, a condition that is anathema to the Church’s central mission of proclaiming the truth of the Gospel.

with the Lord. For Jesus tells us,

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do

That when you fast, do not look

not notice the log that is in your

like the hypocrites, for they disfig-

own eye? How can you say to your

ure their faces that their fasting

brother, ‘Brother, let me take out

may be seen by others. Truly, I say

the speck that is in your eye,’ when

to you, they have received their

you yourself do not see the log that

reward. But when you fast, anoint

is in your own eye? You hypocrite,

your head and wash your face, that

first take the log out of your own

your fasting may not be seen by

eye, and then you will see clearly to

others but by your Father who is in

take out the speck that is in your

secret. And your Father who sees

brother’s eye.

in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:16-18).

This principle does not just apply to fasting; all our worship and devotion should be done as unto God, not simply to impress other men. Anything else is a deception — both of ourselves and others. Such an attitude serves as a fatal blow to our ability to bear witness to God’s greatness.

For Paul in 2 Timothy 3:1-9 refers to those who are “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power…

But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all.” So, all those who profess the name of Christ must avoid being lovers of pleasure, or their witness will be powerless. For when the church is sinful, and we look the other way when ‘brothers’ commit fornication and drunkenness, homosexuality, and other uncleanness, the church becomes like the hypocrite Jesus speaks to in Luke 6:41-43,

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When Christians live a life of sin — a life of hypocrisy — it makes the church powerless. Paul, in Titus 1:1516, points to the fact that Christians living in sin destroy their testimony to the truth of the Gospel: “But to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny Him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.” Falling prey to the sins that plague our university is a denial of God that makes us unfit for any good work. And when the church is filled with the denial of God, who are we to wonder why He denies us His power?

Scripture is clear: our tendency is to be lovers of pleasure, a condition that is anathema to the Church’s central mission of proclaiming the truth of the Gospel. When we give in to that impulse, as our campus presses us to do, we harm the Church itself. And the decay of the Church, grim as it is in the abstract, is even more terrifying in reali-

ty for the fate of the Church is inseparable from the fate of society.

Judges 17 and 18 recount the story of how the sin of one man, Micah, spells trouble for all of Israel. In Judges 17, Micah, a wealthy man, commissioned a carved image and a metal image to put in his shrine with his household gods. A clear violation of the Third Commandment’s prohibition on graven images, Micah’s sin was not uncommon, for “In those days there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6). In Israel, the king was directly anointed by God and was the Church’s most visible leader, shepherding the nation politically and spiritually. The lack of a king, and thus the lack of the Church’s spiritual authority, left entire tribes spiritually famished. Judges 18 recounts how the tribe of Dan, discontent with their allowance and seeking more than what God gave them, set out to capture the land of Ephraim. During their conquest, the tribe came across Micah’s house, stole his cultic objects and household gods, and bought his priest, thus setting up Micah’s blasphemous teachings as guiding principles for their tribe.

Micah’s disobedience did not merely lead his household astray; it opened the door for an entire tribe to stray further from God. Yet Judges 18 does not end with this one act of disobedience. The idolatrous Danites “came to Laish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting, and struck them with the edge of the sword and

burned the city with fire,” (Judges 18:27). Having separated themselves from the Lord’s guidance, the Danites began a campaign of violence against their own people, not pausing even to consider the innocent and defenseless.

Their greed and idols led them to commit horrific acts of violence, elevating oppression and injustice in their community to new levels. This is the direct result of the abandonment of the Church and God’s Word. Micah’s insecurity in the teachings of God compelled him to create additional protections through idol worship, which seized the fancy of a larger tribe that was discontent with God’s will, thus predisposing them to separate further from His redeeming love. They chose to indulge in their basest impulses. From the individual household to the vast scale of nations, violence, injustice, and conflict are all firmly rooted in a lack of the Church and its guidance.

God also makes it clear that when we stray from His way, executing our evil upon each other, we collectively invite His wrath upon ourselves. Amos, a prophet in Judah during the reign of King Uzziah, proclaims God’s judgment on the whole nation of Israel for the transgressions of the Israelites:

to exact his justice upon the Ninevites without delay.

Upon being condemned by Jonah, however, the king commands the people to repent and to turn away from evil. “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it,” (Jonah 3:10). Nineveh, in all its sin, was not beyond God’s mercy, and so when they turned to Him and repented in earnest, He spared them. Surely there is hope for us too.

How often have we cried out in pain over the misery of this world? The deep-seated evil in the world is a constant source of grief. Our distress is not new, nor is God deaf to our pleas for mercy. Wickedness and the infliction of pain are traditions of human society since time immemorial. But we know where it comes from.

It is from us. Thankfully, God’s Word gives us reason to hope: “if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land,” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

For the sake of our Lord and our brothers and sisters here on Earth, I say: Repent!

Thus says the Lord: ‘For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals - those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted; a man and his father go in to the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned… Behold, I will press you down in your place, as a cart full of sheaves presses down’ (Amos 2:6-7,13).

Because people in Israel betray the righteous, enslave the poor, ignore the sick, and profane God and His creation, justice demands that Israel must be punished. No one can escape this condemnation. The apostle Paul confirms this when he writes, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth,” (Romans 1:18). As we see the evil that pervades society, we should feel grief for the loss of the Church, anger for those who have been trampled on, and holy terror of the justice that the Lord is storing up.

But all is not lost! The book of Jonah gives us a powerful template for deliverance from ourselves. Jonah 1:2 gives God’s call to Jonah: “‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.’” Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire and, for a time, the largest city in the world, was indeed great. But its evil was just as great —great enough to capture the attention of God. The Lord’s command to Jonah to “call out against it” makes it clear that He plans

Ben Kelley is a freshman in Columbia College (CC’25) studying Political Science and Statistics. He loves exploring new ideas and reading the Bible into every Lit Hum text.

Contact him at btk2117@columbia.edu.

Rory Wilson is a freshman in Columbia College studying History. He loves discussing theology and eating good food. Contact him at rdw2126@columbia.edu.

Harrison Riley is a freshman in SEAS studying mechanical engineering. You can contact him at hjr2128@columbia. edu.

The Witness | 11

We All Need to Repent!

Dr. George Cladis

“Repent!”

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he very word itself conjures up associations of a street corner fire-and-brimstone preacher, yelling at pedestrians walking briskly through a city square, making sure not to make eye contact with the fiery orator.

I would venture to guess most people associate repentance with hung-up religious freaks easily mocked on latenight comedy shows or with TV series involving religious cults of brainwashed adherents.

Seriously! Have you ever used this word in common speech in any way other than to ridicule or lampoon?

Did you come to university as a freshman to have your views and opinions simply confirmed? If you are a junior or senior, do you think differently than when you first arrived two or three years ago?

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And yet, repentance is an integral component foundational to the Christian life.

In this brief essay, we’ll look at repentance as something everyone should do because it makes sense to do so, it is necessary for even secular people to do, and finally how it functions in the realm of Christianity.

First, repentance is common sense. This essay is appearing in a journal associated with a student group at Columbia University. Did you come to university as a freshman to have your views and opinions simply confirmed?

If you are a junior or senior, do you think differently than when you first arrived two or three years ago? Have you changed at all?

Repentance plain and simple means to change direction. You were going off in one direction and then changed your mind and changed direction. In the Christian New Testament, repentance is generally associated with life direction. I was heading off in the direction of a toxic even deadly environment but repented — changed direction — to a healthier way of living.

Isn’t this hopefully what we all should be doing? Assessing our lives, taking inventory of who we are, becoming more informed of what is the good to be pursued, and then heading off in that direction? And then, along the way, as more information and experience pour into our lives, we make course corrections — yes, engage in further acts of repentance!

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“

Repentance implies growth, curiosity, exploration, and human development.

The problem with repentance is not the concept of it which we readily embrace — ­ otherwise, no one could ever change from being unwoked to woked — but the modern associations that are now attached to the word itself.

Second, repentance is necessary. Without repentance, we would all become stale and stunted.

Repentance implies growth, curiosity, exploration, and human development. Remember the film Napoleon Dynamite? One of the characters was Uncle Rico played by actor Jon Gries. Uncle Rico is an adult trying to re-live his high school football days. He hasn’t moved on. He hasn’t grown or embraced a new future by changing and maturing. He’s stuck in an old self and needs to repent: make a change in his life direction. One of the endearing features of the film is how, through a variety of experiences in the film, he can finally repent and get on with a new direction of life. Without repentance, our world might still be ruled by a few colonial powers vying for countries to gobble up, or a land of plantations with slaves and slave-owners. Repentance is necessary.

Lastly, repentance is a cool Christian concept and activity. Christians believe that repentance is necessary for something we call salvation or deliverance from sin. “Sin” is like “repentance” — a word full of baggage that obscures its meaning. Here’s a way to think of it: our culture is engaged in a time of trying to understand why bias and prejudice still exists. There are efforts among some to locate the

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reason for these things and, in fact, everything that is wrong with us with THOSE people. “Those people” might be a racial group, a gender, a social-economic class, and so forth. Or we might locate the problem in an institution: capitalism, communism, the government, Fox News, CNN, and so forth. Examples are all around us and, in fact, historically it was quite common for societies to blame their ills on THOSE people.

Christians think differently. They say that the problem is in us all. No matter how perfect something is, we’re likely to bring it to ruin, because of something called “sin” in our lives. That sin is primarily our tendency to assert our own egos as godlike. We do not acknowledge God — ­ a power greater than ourselves — but consider ourselves the standard of reality. Frankly, looking back at history, the Christian view of sin is the most empirically verifiable of all Christian doctrines. It’s a kind of spiritual Second Law of Thermodynamics: when people are involved, things tend to get messed up and break apart!

So, what is the solution? Christians say we need to repent of sin. Again, strip away the baggage of Hollywood, and this means that we change direction from putting ourselves first to putting God first.

When we do that, things get better. Do they get perfect? No, no one is perfect but God alone. But better.

The reason: we can see the world through compassionate eyes because we know our own “sin” — our tendency to be selfish and desire the world to orbit

around us — and so we are compassionate when we encounter others who do the same. But we can also be bold. We know that the seeds of injustice and prejudice are in all of us and so we can call them out and address them, not as people who declare these problems stem from THOSE people, but these problems are in us all, and we need to be DELIVERED from them together.

You could say that all of us — Christians and non-Christians alike — haven’t repented enough.

We’ve all been too stuck in our ways lacking the courage to change the course of our lives and advocate the change of course of society.

Conclusion. What shall we say then? Can anyone, secular or religious, object to repentance?

I would think not. Certainly, from a secular viewpoint, it is necessary and even common sensical.

From a Christian perspective, it is critical. The whole of Christian faith centers around a God who so loved creation that the Almighty came to us as

one of us, suffered for us out of love and paid the price for our deliverance, and then offered a way to change one’s life by following this Lord and discovering the depths of true love, lasting hope, and ultimate purpose. The Christian believes that the best and most enduring way to transform society is to be transformed in oneself first, and then become an agent of transformation, not on the basis of creating Enemies who are the problem, but by recognizing that the problem is in us all (sin), and needs to be addressed by a loving God. Then, and only then, can we find the ability to challenge a nation to repent, not based on evil or sin that is in those people or even historical people but the sin that is in us all. On that basis, there is credibility and common complicity that is redeemable by the power of God. So, maybe the next time you hear that street corner preacher barking “repent” at you, take heed.

You probably need to!

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I can only find true change by rooting my selfless repentance in my relationship with God. 16 | vol. 9, no. 1

From Loveless Apologies to Freedom-Filled Repentance Victoria Choe

I

often apologize to feel better about myself.

Back in high school I had been working on a group project with someone who was also on the track team with me. We were assigned to complete a video presentation for my AP U.S. History class — something about Manifest Destiny and the Civil War. And of course, as all group projects tend to be, we were going nowhere. While we were trying our best to be productive after school in the library, I grew flustered watching the clock tick without any progress being made. I was missing practice. And any missed practice I would have to make up by staying overtime on the track. I was not in the mood to stay at school late trying to complete a workout late into the evening. But my project teammate, (let’s call him Brian), who was also on the track team, did not flinch at the clock or the thought of missing practice. Why should he care? He’s on the JV team, never runs at meets, and wouldn’t know the difference between a hurdle and a javelin. Yet he was complaining about how we were not getting any work done. Blood boiling, I had said something along the lines of, “Yeah, well I guess it

doesn’t really matter to you if you miss practice right?” I had pretty much implied that he was useless to the track team and vice versa, track was useless to him.

I felt bad. I still feel bad. But I felt bad because I had hurt my outer appearance. The comment I said made me appear coldhearted and mean. So, the next day when we were working on our group project, I apologized. Not because I genuinely felt sorry that I had hurt Brian, but because in apologizing, I wanted to somehow repair any notion he may have had of me as a rude and inconsiderate human being. By apologizing, I could be a good person, maybe even better than I was before because I had actually humbled myself to the point of apologizing.

I do the same thing to God all the time: “God, I’m sorry I cursed, I won’t do it again.” “Sorry I lied, I really am, I am so so so sorry I lied.” “God, please forgive me for yelling at my parents. I’m so sorry God, I really am.” But of course, my first instinct after doing something wrong is to say sorry because I want to alleviate my own guilt — not because I genuinely felt sorry over the fact that I had hurt God. I only realized this after listening to Tim Keller’s ser-

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mon, “He came to Himself,” where he says, “There’s a kind of repentance [where] the focus is completely on what’s wrong with you, in which case you’re going deeper into self-centeredness, you’re not changing from it. And there’s a kind of repentance, that is focused on the goodness of God and how you’ve broken His heart.”

When I apologized to Brian, there was no love, no sympathy for Brian, his feelings, and how I may have hurt him. In this kind of repentance, there is no true redemption nor growth. I only dig myself deeper into this situation where my actions and their consequences revolve around myself and myself only. In my selfish apologies, I only develop this tunnel vision where there’s no relationship that’s being broken or attempting to be repaired beyond the one with myself. It is utterly selfish, and what change, what friendship, love, or growth comes from that kind of self-centeredness?

Had I apologized to Brian out of genuine love and care, I would have had the opportunity to deepen a connection with someone I had not really paid attention to before.

Had I apologized to God out of genuine love and care, I would have deepened my heart for God and understanding of his own love for me. This kind of repentance is a two-way streak: it is an opportunity for me to open my eyes and see the pain I have caused God by disobeying him, and is also a way for me to receive his love and forgiveness in return.

The only difference between repenting to a human versus God is that while Brian cannot completely redeem me or cleanse me of my wrongdoings, God can.

I can repent to Brian all I want, but the most I will get out of it is hopefully mutual respect, maybe a stronger friendship, and perhaps his forgiveness.

But by repenting to God, I am guaranteed His love, friendship, forgiveness, and am completely washed of all of my wrongdoings — all because His son Jesus Christ paid the price of my sins by dying on the cross.

Genuine repentance to God not only draws me closer to Him, but offers me a chance to change, to become new, and to turn towards obedience to Him. In true, selfless, wholehearted repentance to God, there is complete and perfect freedom.

In his essay, “On Repentance,” Michel de Montaigne reasons why repentance is unnecessary for him.

He writes that “My actions are controlled and shaped to what I am, and to my condition in life. I can do no better” (245). Here, Montaigne underscores that his actions, though they may have been flawed at times, were inevitable because of the specific circumstances that called for them. He continues later on by writing, 18 | vol. 9, no. 1

“I find that in my past decisions I have, by my own rules, acted wisely, taking into account the state of the matter confronting me; and I should do the same a thousand years hence in the same situations. I am not thinking of conditions as they are at present, but as they were when I was considering them” (246).

According to Montaigne, change is difficult because in specific situations he will likely act the same way though his actions may not be justified after the fact.

For him, repentance is unnecessary because changing one’s actions is improbable.

But it’s only improbable when I’m repenting out of selfishness rather than my love for a God who can set my wrongs to rights. And although Montaigne expresses resentment towards repentance because it detracts from the opportunity to embrace one’s past mistakes, I believe there is an even greater opportunity to embrace those past decisions and grow from them through repentance. I can’t free myself from my past mistakes by simply shelving them in the back of my mind or guilting myself to try to redeem myself. I can only find true change by rooting my selfless repentance in my relationship with God. From this, I only learn to love the Father more, and open my eyes to God’s love for me. For humans, and to myself, I can only say the word sorry never being guaranteed true freedom and love. But in Christ’s forgiveness, and by selflessly repenting to Him, I gain the love of a God who says to me, Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

(Isaiah 43:1-3)

Victoria Choe (CC’24) is a sophomore in Columbia College studying history. She loves running and hiking!

Contact her at vc2562@columbia.edu.

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There is no “I” in Hell Alexander Kim In a room of mirrors turned toward me, still, Seeing nothing but self, yet unable to see My mind is crowded but my self its occupant My journey of discovery has come to an end “Who am I?” echoes the room Standing alone, silent with averted “I”s The internal voice questions itself No answer, no reply, no warmth My fingers frozen from the chill of loneliness But inwardly burns my soul with searing pain Clawing through my heart in search of self But my journey of discovery has come to an end Slowly the things I know, the good, the bad Fade as I turn into but a shadow of myself Soon memories slip through my fingers Yet still, no answer, no reply, no warmth In a room of mirrors turned inwards, Still nothing, but a corpse unable to see With mind empty and no longer occupied The journey of the forgotten has no end

Alexander Kim is a youth pastor at Chinese Bible Church of Greater Boston in Massachusetts. You can contact him at akim@bmwbc.org.

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The Preacher’s Confessions Chase Chumchal

“Are other people having existential crises or is it just me??! Like, what is the point of it all why am I even put on this earth .. […] At this point it feels like im procrastinating death lmao.” — Columbia Confession 12159 “does anyone else have like serious waves of panic about dying? […] i know death is an inevitable shared human experience but i can’t help this panic that immobilizes me even when i try to think of dying.” — Columbia Confession 13027 “We’re so terrified of death (well, at least I am) and none of us truly know what’s before or after life. […] What the hell is the human experience? Why is it so short? What is our purpose? Why are we here? What are we doing? Is there something bigger than all of us?” — Columbia Confession 11654 “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” — John 11:25

M

r. Casaubon, a character in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, is what TikTok would refer to as a Dark Academic — scholar, writer, knowledgeable in the ancient languages, owner of a library.

He dedicated his life to the composition of what he hoped would be his seminal work, A Key to All Mythologies. He read and read, traveled abroad to conduct research, and compiled his findings.

He spent decades of his life on this momentous project. He died without getting past the research-phase.

As Columbia students, we can often relate to Mr. Casaubon’s pointless work. A submitted paper that misinterpreted the topic. A group project that fell apart. A P-Set that took hours and hours to complete — the Professor dropped it anyways. This experience, of course, is not limited to Columbia. How many plans and projects all over the world are foiled each day? The Pandemic, for instance, reminded us that everyone, like Mr. Casaubon, is always

susceptible to forces outside of our control. It wasn’t promised that our bodies would always remain healthy. Nothing in the contract agreed to the job being there forever. Who said that the grocery store would always have toilet paper?

Other than a “Mr. Casaubon-experience”, what is it called when all of our work and ambition seem to be so pointless? The pessimist may say “That’s life” — that we are born for disappointment and frustration, and that we just gotta keep on truckin’. The optimist may encourage us to view it all as an opportunity for growth and self-improvement, and that all of our work ultimately matters. The biblical authors, on the other hand, might call it a symptom of Futility.

Anyone who has read the book of Ecclesiastes would have encountered the idea of futility in Scripture. The writer of Ecclesiastes often speaks about the “vanities” of life, which is another way of referring to the “futilities” of life. The futility of work is a major theme in Ec-

clesiastes. In fact, it is the first question the Preacher poses to the reader: Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

To the Preacher, the question is not if someone is able to accomplish their goals and ambitions. Ecclesiastes 2:4-11 is an account of the Preacher’s many accomplished projects, and he still finds it all to be vain and futile. The question is, even if our toil is successful, what is the point of it when it all ends with death?

I

n high school, I had a virtual journal that I titled, Chasing the Wind. The title is both a pun using my name “Chase”, and referential to the Ecclesiastes’ maxim, “All is vanity, like chasing the wind.” It includes the reflections of an ambitious youth eager to escape the humdrum life of a discontent teen and enter into a life of renown,

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power, and achievement. All-in-all, Chasing the Wind is a very cringy read.

Why did I title this journal Chasing the Wind? Perhaps for one, I began to feel the thick presence of my work’s futility, such as on 6/2/2018, when I received my SAT Subject Test Scores back. I opened the entry with: “I have faced reality today and have accepted the possibility of defeat.” In an instant, my house of cards could come crashing down on me, such as on 8/6/2018, in a similar response to an unidentified event (probably another disappointing test score) that caused me to open an entry with: “My plans are no longer in place. They are decimated, destroyed, done.” (Dramatic, I know.)

But perhaps this house of cards was worth building. If I got into the Ivy League, then I could get into a good grad school. If I got into a good grad school, then I could succeed in a competitive field, get a big house, have a good title. I could be remembered, I could be recognized, I could be revered.

And so it was time to get to work. High school thus became a time to volunteer, a time to take on initiatives, a time to build the best possible resume. It was a time to study, a time to read, a time to take the SATs. After all, as I noted in the 6/2 passage, “These scores could possibly determine my life after high school.” Even though “I [hated] being defined by scores, grades, colleges.”

But what if I were to succeed in all of my ambitions?

What if I were to even exceed them? What would be the point? If the point is the attainment of a desirable image of some future Me, or some future inheritance for my kids, the success of some global project, even if I accomplished all of that, what would be the point? What will happen when like a vapor it all dissipates before my eyes, and the house I have been building is nothing more than a pile of rubble scattered across the merciless sand?

My last entry was 12/13/2018: the day I got into Columbia.

E

cclesiastes poses a serious problem that we all have to face: How do we work knowing that we will one day die? When confronted with this problem, the typical Columbia student might give one out of two answers in response. The first is that, in view of death, one should work for the self. The second is that, in view of death, one should work for others.

The first response — that in view of death one should work for the self — is not entirely different from what Ecclesiastes says. the Preacher’s solution to work’s futility is for us to basically stop stressing and start living (e.g., Ecclesiastes 2:24). This doesn’t seem like a very ancient idea to us. It was reported in the NY Times last year that many well-off millennials in response to the draining and de-

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manding Zoom-Labor of the Pandemic embraced this kind of approach to work. But rather than “vanity of vanities”, the modern philosophical thrust to this kind of work seems to be YOLO.1 But the Preacher’s exhortation for one to enjoy the fruits of their labor is not a license for individualistic pleasure-seeking, rather it is to be a delight in the gifts that God has given us. But when the purpose of work becomes solely for the self, like Mr. Casaubon, we become “the centre of [our] own world.”2 And it doesn’t take a lot of cultural analysis to see that a purely self-interested work ethic quickly takes the ethics out of work altogether, and soon enough we and our institutions are resembling Babel more than Zion.

On the other hand, the second response — that in view of death one should work for others — seeks to overcome the problem of work’s futility by looking beyond one’s own life and toward the common good of humanity, both now and in future generations. By looking outside of the self to see how one’s work will impact the world around them, this approach to work can help alleviate the problem of self-interested and self-indulgent workers and institutions.

Yet, before we pick up our stones to throw at those who toil for the sake of the self, it should be noted that working for others is not always innocent, either. In fact, some of the most violent deeds in history have been done, not by those who simply wanted to have a good time, but by those who labored in the name of the “common good”. Genocides are often sparked by an appeal to the “good” of the community.

Even the religious leaders of Jesus’s day crucified Him for what they thought would be best for the people. It is not the selfish, but the so-called selfless worker whose “common good” is often the community’s worst, and most hidden, evil.

Even more, there is a logic behind laboring for the self that working for others can lack. That is, if death is the end, then why should I work for others? If there is no objective affirmation of the goodness of life and the badness of death, no God in heaven who will one day judge the living and dead, then why should I care if my current behavior is at the expense of others around me or of future generations? Who’s to even say that death isn’t actually good and life bad? In this case, then let’s just eat and drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Although brief generalizations, both of these responses can either lead to the conclusion that death makes work ultimately futile, or to the conclusion that ignores death altogether. In both cases, death wins, and we, like Mr. Casaubon, lose. Although Ecclesiastes ends with a validation of God’s judgment, the book can still easily shake the modern reader into despairing, nihilistic realizations. Or 1 "Welcome to the YOLO Economy", Kevin Roose, NYTimes.com.

2 Eliot; Middlemarch; Book I; Chapter X.

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to rephrase: he has put us in quite the pickle.

Yet, as the biblical authors diagnose, so do they provide the cure. Ecclesiastes was never meant to be read as an isolated unit, but as a text that rises from the Scriptures and is answered by the Scriptures. We can hear echoes of God’s curse to humanity when Adam and Eve first sinned in Genesis 3 — “All are from dust, and to dust all return” (Ecclesiastes 3:20; cf., Genesis 3:19).

We can see Adam’s curse of futile labor weigh heavily on the Preacher’s back, a son of Adam destined to work the soil in vain. With Genesis in mind, we can see that futile work, rather than being a part of “nature’s norms”, is actually an alien aspect of human life, instituted by God as a result of our rebellion against Him. Against this backdrop, the New Testament writers testify that the resolution to the problem of futility — raised in Ecclesiastes and instituted in Genesis — is ultimately reconciliation with God and for death to die altogether. The New Testament authors proclaimed Christ as the One whose

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For the Christian, the primary question perhaps shifts from “How do we work knowing that we will die?”, to the question, “How do we work knowing that we will rise?” death reconciled us to God, and whose resurrection conquered death itself, offering eternal life to all who would repent and believe in Him. In this way, Christ’s resurrection opens up a new reality to those who follow Him. Through faith and repentance, we ourselves can come to share in Christ’s resurrection from death to life. Christ is therefore the key to Ecclesiastes. He is the key to all futilities.

Paul understood that Christ was the key to the problem of futility. For example, he begins Romans 8 with the declaration that those in Christ are now reconciled to God, no longer under the curse of sin and death (8:1-2). As God’s Spirit rose Christ from the dead, so will His Spirit raise the followers of Christ from the dead (8:10). And even more,

through the resurrection of Christ’s followers, the entire creation “subjected to futility” will be set free and resurrected itself — the reversal of the curses instituted in Genesis 3 (8:20-21).

Indeed, the Greek word Paul uses here for “futility” is the same Greek word for “vanity” in Ecclesiastes when it was translated from Hebrew to Greek in the Septuagint.3 Paul in this way shows that the resurrection of Christ is the reversal of life’s futility, since Christ’s resurrection was the catalyst of a cosmic resurrection, that we ourselves can share in it through faith and repentance.

As the curse of death is undone, and we are reconciled to God through Christ, so is work’s futility done away 3 The Expositor’s Greek Testament, Romans 8:20.

with. For the Christian, the primary question perhaps shifts from “How do we work knowing that we will die?”, to the question, “How do we work knowing that we will rise?” We are to be defined and driven no longer by the here-and-now, but by God who raises the dead. We can enjoy His gifts as a result of our work without curving in on ourselves, knowing that only He is the true source of fullness and Life. Our joy and worth are no longer contingent upon our performance and merit, since we are not mere workers, but we are ultimately children of God. Yet, we have the joyous calling to work for God and for the common good, knowing that the common good is rooted in God’s objective affirmations of what is good and what is bad, as testified in Scripture and attested by Christ’s resurrection. We can labor for a Kingdom and a King, knowing that in the end it will not float upon the wind to No-Where, but will be used to help establish Christ’s currently hidden Kingdom, a Kingdom that has come and is soon to fully come. After all, when Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Boss.

I

t was a week after getting into Columbia and a week since I made an entry in Chasing the Wind. I was trying not to chase the wind anymore. Yet, perhaps a part of me still wanted to. I liked to chase the wind. It was fun.

But a week after reaching the climax of my high school academic career — my acceptance into Columbia — I found myself, not chasing the wind, but clenching the ground, crying out to God to have mercy, every breath rising to heaven, the veiled horror of life’s futility made manifest. Without God, all would be misery. Without God, all would be vanity. Without God, all would be eternal death. All would be hell.

As I look back on that day, I see the joyous glimmer of a life-changing season of repentance within my discipleship to Christ — my U-Turn from a heart bent toward chasing the wind to one chasing after Christ. And so I stopped writing entries in Chasing the Wind. I chased the wind and never got it. But when I chased Christ, not only did I get Him, but I discovered that He was chasing after me the whole time.

To repent is to take a U-Turn off of the wide road that leads to death, and onto the road that follows Christ — that narrow, Ancient Path that leads to life. In this way, repentance to Christ is not just a rational decision, but it is also a change in desire and affection. Repentance is not just the acceptance of ideas or ideals, but it is also the entrance into a new reality, a new humanity altogether. Repentance includes the head and heart and hands. It requires the whole person, since whatever one’s life is wrapped around, that is where one finds their love, their fear, their Life. And indeed, with my bounded life now wrapped around a boundless God, it was time to turn the page, pick up the pen, and get back to work:

1/22/2019 O, praise Him! It’s like all of the years I [spent] studying and working and learning [were] for the sake of this moment: the period of time where all I want to do is learn about the One […] that pulls everything together. This perseverance and spirit of dedication I developed over the past five years wasn’t for success (as I previously intended) but for His plan! All of the qualities I was using for me is now being used for the Lord’s Kingdom.

So I dig deeper, and I search for understanding, wisdom, discernment. Yes, I dig deeper. Using the tools He provided me. I shovel near the Tree of Life. Not to meddle with it — for I can’t — but to understand it. I observe its root system; where Life started and where it is going. I look up and see the glowing green surround me. I laugh and smile, tears filling my eyes. I hear His whispers gently rustling through the leaves. I cannot see Him, but I see what He is doing as the branches move where He tells them. How I crave to be like those branches.

Chase Chumchal (CC’23) is a junior in Columbia College currently studying English Literature. Contact him at cac2311@columbia.edu.

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Repentance: Despair and Faith Feven Negussie

“The biggest danger of losing oneself can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.”

Kierkegaard

C

an one repent for despairing?

The first two years of college I struggled with severe anxiety and depression which manifested itself in insomnia, extreme weight loss, and unimaginable stress.

It all came suddenly one summer when I could not fall asleep. The sleepless nights progressively got longer over the course of a couple of months and I began to feel increasingly irritable and afraid. My deteriorating mental health then began to take a toll on my physical health; I suddenly could not eat many foods and could only drink water and milk.

So, I ate oatmeal and white rice everyday for over a year. It was unbearable — almost suffocating. I felt deprived of my life and of my joy — I could not imagine living like this for a couple more years. Something had to be done. I attended many therapies throughout the years, tried different antidepressants, and experimented with different relaxation

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techniques to no sufficient avail. I considered leaving college for a year until I healed. But every time I got closer to signing the form for a leave of absence, my health would improve and I thought, “I am getting better and will be able to finish this school year if not the next.” So I held off on signing the form with the deluded belief that I would actually get better. But I never did, though this false hope at least kept me in school for two years. As the days, the weeks, and the months passed while I sat idly on my bed brooding over anxious and negative thoughts, I realized I was jumping headlong into the abyss of despair. I felt so completely alone. I couldn’t eat or sleep — the two things guaranteed to us by virtue of being human! I felt trapped and overburdened; my one and only life was in jeopardy — and everything, my career and school, was at risk. I did not have a purpose or the motivation to do anything, and the more I thought about the meaninglessness of all things, the more I cried in despair. I did not know what I should now live for, if not for the pursuit of these things. How could everything suddenly become so meaningless and dreary over the course of a couple months?

Kierkegaard, a Christian philosopher of the 19th century, posits that despair — the thing I was experiencing most acutely — precludes us from knowing ourselves truly and becoming the full humans we are designed to be; and, ultimately, the cause of this despair is that we do not know that we are a synthesis of polarities that need to be balanced. The main synthesis that we ought be aware of is that we are both infinite and finite and, as such, we must explore these aspects of ourselves continually. Concentrating purely on the infinite renders us too imaginative and aloof, while focusing only on the finite

constrains us to the unimaginative everyday life. I was experiencing the latter; I practiced no religion seriously and would have labeled myself as an agnostic at the time. I was aware only of my physical and material reality and nothing beyond or above. My anxiety worsened, despite the medication and therapy, and I later realized that I was struggling with nihilism — utter meaninglessness. The only goal at the time was educational success and working to attain my career — is this all there is to my life? I was weighed down by the heaviness of my despair and was enveloped with darkness. I felt disembodied, and everyday I became more and more of a stranger to my body — which was rapidly changing due to my eating disorder. I felt as though I lived, so to speak, in the pit of hell and I only wished for a small window to let in a ray of light into my dungeon.

I remember one day speaking on the phone with my sister who encouraged me to attend a church service happening that night. I remember it was a Thursday and I was extremely hesitant; I was exhausted, hungry, and irritable. I did not know what I should go for — to seek a false sense of hope? However, when evening arrived, I thought about seriously going — I didn’t have anything else to do but homework so … why not?

There were about thirty people present and I sat in the middle row to be less conspicuous. One Columbia student got up to speak about a verse that had a profound meaning in his life from the Book of Matthew, in which Jesus says, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Immediately after he read it, I became very emotional and stopped listening to his commentary after he read the verse aloud. I was so hungry that night and I felt a deep heaviness in my stomach. If I could not have food or sleep or my health, what else can I live for? I returned home to read that entire chapter in Matthew in which the verse was found and I learned that Jesus was also hungry (without

Most of us, however, are only aware of our finite existence without any conception of eternal reality, and this unawareness is precisely what breeds despair within each of us. any food or water for 40 days), sleepless, and exhausted when He uttered those words. And yet, He did not see food, sleep, or health as constituting a sufficient life; instead, He believed that living by every word that comes from God as the ultimate measure of a good life. I did not know what this meant but it gave me a fresh sense of hope — not the false kind — but loosening everything that constrained me (such as food or sleep or health) and orienting my life to the spiritual.

Kierkegaard maintains that without the recognition of the two aspects — the eternal and the temporal — one cannot attain full selfhood and come to realize the meaning and purpose of life.

Most of us, however, are only aware of our finite existence without any conception of eternal reality, and this unawareness is precisely what breeds despair within each of us. The self is a self-relating synthesis or, simply put, a spirit.

Kierkegaard, therefore, asserts that the closer a person is of being conscious of their eternal aspect, the closer he or she is to true selfhood and the closer out of despair. And I never knew I had an eternal aspect until one day, as I sat in my bed brooding over my life, I saw an old Bible on the bookshelf. I picked it up and began to read first the Psalms, then the Gospels, then the Torah and eventually the entire Bible within six months.

I connected with Chrisitians online, in Columbia, and began to attend a Protestant church regularly in order to be with a community of believers. I met people that deeply cared for me and prayed and fasted for my healing and restoration. I began to take my spiritual self seriously and devoted myself to prayer and to the

studying of the Scriptures. And slowly, as though by a miracle, I began to heal physically and mentally. I gained weight, made friends, laughed a little, and began to sleep normally. There was, after all, meaning to life — there is a God, I thought. I meditated on this fact continually so that I could internalize it.

Hope slowly replaced despair, and joy replaced depression, and love took the place of fear and anxiety. Kierkegaard writes that despair cannot be exorcized without true assessment of one’s spiritual and physical state. And I began to ferociously examine my spiritual and physical state after becoming a Christian; I became aware of the infinite self or the spiritual, eternal self.

During this period of learning to live a spiritual life, I suddenly, as though it was by some supernatural act, stumbled upon a book in the storage room of my house that would come to change my life forever. The book was dense and dusty and it was titled The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I was at first very hesitant to read it; I was intimidated by its length and expected it to be rigorous and lofty. I nonetheless picked it up and began to read it. It was incredible! It took me two months to read it in its entirety, during which it confirmed to me the importance of spiritual living. One of the characters, Ivan — who happens to be, strangely enough, an atheist — speaks of the importance of infinite, eternal living. He says to his brother, “I humbly confess that I do not have any ability to resolve such questions, I have a Euclidean mind, an earthly mind, and therefore it is not for us to resolve things that are not of this world...All such questions

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I became less anxious and fearful of the finite world— and in seeking its pleasures and accolades less, my “self” was slowly restored to me.

are completely unsuitable to a mind created with a concept of only three dimensions. And so, I accept God, not only willingly, but moreover I also accept his wisdom and his purpose, which are completely unknown to us; I believe in order, in the meaning of life, I believe in eternal harmony, in which we are all supposed to merge, I believe in the Word for whom the universe is yearning, and who himself was ‘with God,’ who himself is God, and so on and so forth, to infinity.” It is interesting to read Ivan, the “atheist,” grappling with extreme honesty the finite, constrained Euclidean three-dimensional mind, and the infinite, faith and meaning, to make sense of himself and of the world in which he lives. Ivan is an atheist in the novel but he later confesses his belief in God, as much as he could not “accept” the painful world that God has created, because living in the finite world is not sufficient and meaningful for him. At this particular moment in my life, this was a confirmation for me that everything lacks meaning without a firm faith. And, like Ivan, I made the decision to not merely live a finite life, but an eternal one. It was in the meditation and practice of spiritual, infinite living and growing in faith that my sleep and physical and mental health issues began to heal. I became less anxious and fearful of the finite world­­— and in seeking its pleasures and accolades less, my “self” was slowly restored to me.

Like Kierkegaard, Ivan’s despair leads him to find the solution in God. He concludes that faith in God is the only way out of the state of despair because it allows one to have a conception of the eternal and commune with his or her Creator. This meditation on the eternal and temporal realities balances the synthesis of human polarities. In light of this knowledge and relationship with God, it is a sin to despair because one is choosing despair when it is not necessary. I battle with this everyday be-

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cause I still struggle with despair, but not as strongly and deeply as before; it is not a nihilistic form of despair. Kierkegaard, therefore, concludes that faith not only drives out despair but also sin. Because despair, amidst the knowledge of God, is sin. Faith is the antidote to despair; and repentance the antidote to sin. Despair, thus, is a lack of faith­— and, as such, healing from despair must be accompanied by repentance for despair and lack of faith. So, I repented to God almost daily for my despair and begged for an increase of faith, like the apostles in Luke’s Gospel account. “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’” (Luke 17:5). And God, in His faithfulness, heard my cry and my faith grew and the despair subsided, until it no longer tormented my soul. I confess truly that Christianity was my path to sanity after a prolonged mental and emotional crisis — after a few years of severe psychological and spiritual damage — I can only be thankful to find 1 myself here, in active repentance and faith.

Feven is a Senior at Barnard College studying o P litical Science and History. n I her free time she loves to cook, take photos, and read. She also loves spending time with her loved ones and worshipping/praying with God’s people.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881. The Brothers Karamazov. New York :Vintage Books, 1950.

Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death. Princeton University Press, 1983. Print.

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Perspective A Golden Shovel Poem Elizabeth Huang

”

You are to lay your hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on your behalf to make atonement for you.

Leviticus 1:4 (NIV)

*Poems in the Golden Shovel form (created by Terrance Hayes) use each word of an existing piece of writing as the last word of every new line.

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I look back at animal slaughters on the altar. For You, they bruised an unblemished to replenish those ensnared by the hunger for thrill and control. I look today to crisp wafers and cups of grape juice. For You, they play “How Great Thou Art” with praise. As for me, “confess your offenses” enters through one ear and out the other. Hands clasped in my lap, I lift my bowed head and concentrate on the darting minute hand. Restless, I look away from the hopelessness within me. Instead, I bow my head to scroll down a handheld screen. I look away from the religion of ritualistic practice because empty religion can’t cure the loneliness in a crowd. The act of offering a burnt sacrifice can’t soothe emptiness after success. Offering ten percent and my every Sunday morning and a verse in my online profile can’t still my heart when it rattles in panic. Why am I so broken? Will the crisp wafers and cups of grape juice ever be enough to fulfill the hole in my heart? So I look to You, unaccepted by all else, battered and bruised, left by Your Father, hanging on a tree. Lonely in a crowd, empty after great success, Your heart rattling in anguish. You chose brokenness on my behalf.

It’s not just the crisp wafers and cups of grape juice. To You, it’s not just slaughter on the altar. It’s how You don’t make everything disappear, but You appear. Before I feel sorry, Your atonement is available. My heart is lonely, empty, and rattling, but Your forgiveness steadies me. I look to the cross. I’m found by You.

Elizabeth Huang is a junior (CC’23) majoring in English Literature. She enjoys sharing book recommendations with others, she drinks too much bubble tea, and if you think she can steer any conversation toward K-pop then you’re absolutely right.

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Absolute Restoration A Comparison of the Son of Perdition and the Rock of the Church Benjamin Brake

O

f all Jesus’ twelve disciples detailed in the Gospel accounts, few are as iconic as Simon Peter and Judas Iscariot. Indeed, these two are the only ones explicitly detailed to have turned away from Jesus in the final hours preceding His crucifixion. Yet while the former’s legacy is that of “The Rock,” celebrated as one of the key founders of the emerging Christian Church (in fact, heralded as the central founder according to Western Roman Catholic tradition), the latter’s legacy survives only as the “Son of Perdition” (John 17:12), whose personal identity is forever tarnished by his treachery against Christ. Such significant disparity of outcome between these two disciples, especially when considering their otherwise similar feelings of remorse after committing their sins, provides crucial insight into the proper meaning of repentance under biblical Christian framework. It shows that any human act of repentance, insofar as it aims to restore the moral quality of the person,1 must ultimately ground itself in the salvific love of Christ as the divine Savior.

To better appreciate the ultimate disparity between Judas and Peter, some key similarities between these disciples should be briefly noted. Their stories begin similarly enough: both were called as disciples early in Jesus’ ministry (Mark 3:13-19) and remained with Him throughout His subsequent travels through Galilee and Judea. Both listened closely to Jesus’ teachings, were privy to the deeper explanations of His more ambiguous parables (Mark 4:10-12), and both participated in the spreading of Jesus’ transformative message throughout the region of Galilee (Matthew 10).

Such shared experiences are of course extended in similar manner to the other ten disciples.

Yet, as alluded to above, what perhaps most uniquely aligns Judas and Peter is their correlating, albeit distinct, rejections of Christ on the night of His arrest. Just as Jesus had predicted at their Passover 1 This basic conception of “moral quality” and the pressing need for its resolution need not be tied to any specific justification or

atonement theories, whether Western legalistic or Eastern ontological, in order to be appreciated. Rather, it is based on the simple and obvious fact of humanity’s imperfection, “that all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

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The imperfect cannot undo their imperfection, nor “outweigh” their imperfect ontology via some sufficient quantity of good deeds. celebration,2 each man would go on to reject Him: Judas committed outright betrayal – he secretly plotted to deliver Jesus’ location to the Chief priests in exchange for monetary compensation (Matthew 26:15), culminating in Judas’ infamous kiss of betrayal and Jesus’ arrest at Gethsemane (Matthew 26:47-50) – while Peter publicly disowned his Lord three times when interrogated by strangers (Matthew 26:69-75). Although committing different acts of betrayal, both men shared in intentional renunciations of Jesus as Lord, although Judas’ betrayal was arguably more calculated, more severe, and more consequential.

In yet further similarity, both men demonstrate a powerful sense of guilt over their respective actions. After learning that Jesus was sentenced to crucifixion, Judas tried in vain to undo the events, offering to return the thirty silver coins to the Jewish chief priests (Matthew 27:1-10). In this act, Judas attempted to reverse his treacherous transaction, to atone for his wrongdoing. This repentance is not merely performative but made explicit through Judas’ earnest and self-incriminating exclamation: “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood” (Matthew 27:4). His attempt at repentance is clearly sincere. As 20th century Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth states of it, “There is no reason not to take seriously this repentance, this confession, this attempt of Judas to make restitution” (Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume II.2, p.466-467).

But the deed was done, and no amount of repentance could alter it. The biblical text does not explain what Judas had originally expected to happen as result of his betrayal, but it is evident that the impact of Judas’ sin extended far beyond his own intentions (Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume II.2, p.466). He did not intend for Christ’s torture at the hands of the Romans, nor for the crucifixion which followed it. Yet this chain of events was the unintended consequence of his own treachery, and he recognized himself as its initiating cause. In knowledge of his terrible wrong and his inability to properly atone for it, Judas was led to despair, and he committed suicide sometime thereafter (Matthew 27:3-5).

Compare this to Peter’s attempted repentance. Though Peter had sworn that he would never disown his Lord (Recall Matthew 26:33), the rooster’s crows bore witness to Peter’s disgraceful renunciations and thereby pronounced the verity of Christ’s prophecy. Upon hearing the crowing and recalling Christ’s prediction, Peter “went outside and wept bitterly” 2 The Last Supper

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(Matthew 26:75). Like Judas, he showed evident signs of distress concerning his wrongs against Christ.

Yet while Matthew 27 speaks of Judas’ despairing suicide, Scripture instead presents Peter with a powerful redemptive arc, detailing his return back into the fold of Christ’s loving mentorship and developing him as a central figure in the spread of the Good News and the founding of the Christian Church after Christ’s ascension.3 So what is the reasoning for such a significant disparity between Judas and Peter? Although Judas’ betrayal may be of greater weight than Peter’s, insofar as Judas’ active conspiring against Jesus can plausibly be deemed worse than Peter’s verbal renunciation, is it merely the difference of their acts that determines their respective placement? Did they not both share similar displays of guilt, and each perform corresponding repentant acts? And is not Judas’ repentance at least as adequate as Peter’s, if not more so (at least based on the passages examined thus far), insofar as Judas provides formal explication of his sins and a correlating act of penance?4 If scripture gave us nothing more than these passages, then perhaps such questions could not be adequately answered. But of course, this is not the case.

However, before continuing on to the remainder of Peter’s story and the crucial details provided therein, it is important to note what can already be said about proper repentance based on the biblical passages already examined, or rather, what can be identified as insufficient repentance. It is evident here that mere feelings of guilt, even when coupled with correlating self-corrective acts, lack restorative power and thus are rendered inadequate. That is to say, no amount of remorse for one’s actions, nor even any correlating self-contrived acts of atonement, can sufficiently absolve one’s sins once already committed. After all, when one has committed an immoral act, it is an affront to God, an affront which cannot be covered up by subsequent pleas or good works. Thus, from one’s own initiative, all one could hope for would be some limited, relative redemption via other “good works” as an attempt to “outweigh” the bad with greater goods. But one could never hope for holistic, absolute restoration, to “erase” or “cover” the bad itself. What is done cannot be undone. Yet if this be true, then the human act of repentance is reduced to a mere relative act, a good work to add to the list of good works, but never a 3 See the Book of Acts, for example.

4 i.e. his attempt to return the coins.

work capable of erasing the original act in question, and so certainly not capable of achieving absolute restoration.

Judas and Peter could go on to live as best they could, repenting of their wrongdoings and trying to outdo their sins with subsequent acts of goodness to relatively better their moral status.

Yet their moral status would forever be qualitatively deficient, lacking absolute redemption. Complete, absolute restoration of their moral personhood could never come from such relative attempts. The qualitative gap between moral perfection and imperfection could never logically be bridged by mere relative, quantitative measures, whether repentance or otherwise.5 This is not to say that Peter and Judas were wrong in their responses, or that somehow their guilt was irrelevant.

Rather, guilt must surely be a precondition for any future hope of intentional repentance, insofar as purposefully turning away from one’s wrong ways requires first a recognition that those ways are indeed wrong. Admitting one has a problem is the first step to recovery, as the adage goes. And necessarily presupposing this, too, is the fundamental belief that there is such a thing as moral wrong, that there is a problem needing resolution. Thus, for Judas and Peter to properly repent of their immoral acts, they should feel remorse. Had Judas not been compelled to return the money, had Peter not departed from the crowd and wept, one might seriously wonder whether they felt remorse at all.

5 I have opted for the language of “perfect/im-

perfect” to describe this impassible gap, but the distinction could also be made with alternative language, such as with a “good/bad” distinction, or a “virtuous/wicked”, or any number of contraries, so long as we properly define “bad”, “wicked”, etc. as encompassing all deviations from the “good” and “virtuous”, etc. However, I think colloquial usages of these latter terms often lead to ambiguity and perhaps even a breakdown of the binary qualitative distinction, insofar as we often speak of certain human qualities as “neither good nor bad”.

Thus, the “perfect/imperfect” language seems better suited for displaying the human condition as broadly identified here with respect to moral quality. Indeed, the common saying “no one is perfect” betrays a pervasive agreement on the obviousness of this truth.

These actions corresponding to their real sense of guilt are, if nothing else, at least indications of their admitted wrongdoing and desire for restoration.

Yet the point still remains: those feelings and corresponding acts were inadequate. Judas’ blood-money was permanently stained by betrayal, and as such, could not be redeemed (As Barth points out, even the Chief Priests had recognized this to be true. See Matthew 27:6 and Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume II.2, p.467-8). Mere recognition of guilt is insufficient for proper repentance. And mere self-directed acts are insufficient, too. The guilty party cannot restore itself. Judas’ guilt must ultimately lead to despair, since his immorality cannot justly be ignored, and yet he lacks the power to absolve himself of it.

Here we have reached a critical juncture, at which point the remainder of Peter’s story must be examined.

For while we find in Judas the dismal conclusion of repentance if based solely on our own capacities, the story of Peter returns our attention to Jesus as the Christ, who may finally give new life to the power of repentance as He offers hope for true, complete restoration through His role as the saving Lamb of God (John 1:29).

The Gospel of John tells us of Peter’s reconciliation to his Lord after Christ’s resurrection, and, in so doing, presents a fulfilling repentance otherwise lacking in Judas’ despairing version, one based in the power of Christ’s salvific love. Just as Peter had denied Jesus three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest, as he had effectively renounced his devotion to his Lord, so now Jesus, after His resurrection, asks Peter three times, “Simon [Peter], son of Jonah, do you love me?” (John 21:15-19)6 For each of 6 Each iteration of Christ’s offer to Peter is impor-

tantly followed up with a command to “feed my sheep”, i.e. to care for and guide Christ’s followers, the Church. For Peter at least, if not for all Christian leaders, proper repentance thus should be joined by a commitment to care and provide for the greater Christian body of believers.

Peter’s prior immoral acts, Christ now reciprocates with a loving offer. And where Christ responds to Peter’s failure with love, so Peter can in turn devote himself to his Lord with renewed, reciprocal love. Peter’s imperfect love for Christ, previously stained by his sin and public denunciation, is now absorbed into Christ’s perfect love (1 John 4:19).

Thus, the gap between the perfect and imperfect, formerly impassable, is now crossed through Christ, who, through His infinite love as the Savior Son of God, acts as the mediating bridge. The repentance of Peter, made possible

by Christ, is altogether different from Judas’, no longer despairing, but rather finding restoration in the loving reciprocation of Jesus, the Son of God. Thus, proper repentance as presented in the Christian Gospel only makes sense in light of God’s grace through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, a fact which requires that Christ is who He said He was: the Incarnate Son of God, who died for our sins as testified by the apostles (See John 3:16, for example). This is where Peter rooted his repentance, and where Judas did not. Any repentance short of this, any mere human repentance such as Judas’, is utterly insufficient for absolute restoration, and so must inevitably lead to despair. The imperfect cannot undo their imperfection, nor “outweigh” their imperfect ontology via some sufficient quantity of good deeds. The qualitative difference cannot be bridged unless by Christ Incarnate as Mediator, who offers hope for us all through His real personhood as fully human and divine. Proper repentance must then be a repentance of faith, one which begins with our relational submission to God as we reciprocate Christ’s loving offer.

Benjamin Brake (CC’24) is a sophomore in Columbia College currently studying Economics and Philosophy. He is fascinated by discussions of religion, philosophy, and politics. Feel free to contact him at bdb2135@columbia.edu.

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Shades of a Fig Tree Tony Kim

The fig tree grips me The bark presses against my bare back Its fingers trace the crevices Its lips kiss my tears and soaks in the sweat underneath the sun Under its shade, it sees me Its silence echoes everything I’ve ever done Everything I’ve ever felt It knows my name It sits with me, enveloping me A warm touch in the waiting

Tony Kim (CC ‘23) studies neuroscience and philosophy.

John 1 is one of his favorite passages, from which this poem takes inspiration. Contact him at tjk2141@ columbia.edu.

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Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, Acts 3:19

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