Confucius Says: “A man who has committed a mistake and does not correct it, is committing another mistake”

We must take responsibility for one’s actions – we made this mistake, WE, need to correct it. If you took on a debt, gave your word to repay your creditor in full of the agreed upon interest, you must keep your word. Your creditor gave you his money in good faith; you must return his faith in you.

If we made a mistake, for example, we broke an expensive figurine at someone’s party, we owe the owner. We MUST buy a replacement figurine and deliver it with our apologies for the loss that we caused. Sometimes the mistake is more serious; if we have seriously injured someone, then we must shoulder all their treatment expense, the loss of income while the victim is unable to work.

That is what society expects us to do, if brought before a court of law, what the judge expects us to do. Do not disgust the Judge with tears of self-pity, do not ask for forgiveness from the judge, for such a right is the victim’s alone. Forgiveness is Earned, it is never Given – it should never be asked for, nor begged for. We need to stand tall and take responsibility for what we did, for our actions, and vow to do the right thing. Pay back our creditors their owed money, do right by our victims no matter what the cost!

Sadly, most religions do not preach these morals, ethics. In Hinduism, one of the tenets of Reincarnation says that we must return and repay our unpaid debts, correct our mistakes. The creditor is waiting, so is the Victim.

Other religions like Christianity & Islam promise nice Gods who will listen to our tears of self-pity, which they call Repentance, and will nicely forgive us. God will help us steal our creditors money, cheat our victims! All our debts are paid off! All our mistakes have been forgiven, that is what they promise. This is news to our Creditors, our Victims! In the REAL WORLD, things do not work this way, debts do not get paid off, mistakes remain uncorrected, but they do, only in these fantasy worlds of these religions.

Repentance is not crying tears of self-pity, feeling bad about what we did, but understanding that we are not the victims here, the one that is crying, that is hurt is the victim and we did this to them. We need to face them, accept responsibility for what happened, apologize to them and tell them that we will do all we can to correct the situation, make the victim whole again! THAT, is True Repentance!