“I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day.” said Paul the apostle, in Acts 23:1b (NASB). Can we say the same? Paul was not saying he didn’t sin. He labeled himself “the chief of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:5). How does one live a life with no regrets?
I recently talked to a woman who had limited contact with her own mother, for reasons of past abuse and present “toxic” conditions. Having closer contact would hurt her own family, and had not proven helpful to her mother in the past in any case. It is a harmful relationship kept alive only by family ties and by an effort to keep someone she loves from feeling abandoned.
The decision had been made some time ago that it would be best for all concerned not to let a toxic relationship take up a large chunk of time and energy. This choice did not come easily or without much prayerful thought. It was a hard decision, but one that had to be made.
She wondered aloud to me if she would regret this later in life.
My response to her is that if she truly was living by the golden rule, holding this family member accountable for her misbehavior rather than enabling it, she would have nothing to look back on in regret. She had stated on many occasions that this is what she would want someone to do if she were in that woman’s shoes. This is the essence of “doing unto others as you would have others do unto you.” It is harder to know what that is, when the person in question lives a lifestyle that is completely foreign to you. But it can, and should, be done.
No regrets. Good conscience. This does not mean we won’t make mistakes, or exercise bad judgment once in a while. We are all fallible human beings. No one lived a perfect life but Christ.
In the end, if we keep doing our best and following the example of our Savior, we will truly have “no regrets.”
Does this mean there will not be things we would have done differently, once we gain the visual clarity of hindsight? Of course not. Does it mean we will make every decision exactly the way we should? No.
What Paul experienced and testified about, and what we are striving for, is to have no regrets for the moral compass that guides us. We may be tossed around and veer off of the path we would have wanted, but the choice to follow God’s leading in the Bible will keep setting us back on course.
In the big picture, we will have no regrets.