CAN A TIGER CHANGE ITS STRIPES?

Our prisons service in Britain pays lip service to the theory that a man can redeem himself and be changed for the better. But an offender’s criminal record will haunt him for life, never ever being wiped clean, never obliterated: a criminal offender is offered no path to redemption within our society.

Most of us do not believe that someone can truly change his nature. “A leopard cannot change his spots,” we like to say. And with most people, I believe this is true: most people’s characters are formed by the time they reach their adolescence. From then on, their nature become graven in stone. To change, you have to wish to change. And most people, though they might wish fervently that their circumstances would change (for the better) do not for a moment wish that they themselves would change: they are far too self-satisfied to harbor any desire to change.

The desire for fundamental personal change, rather than merely a desire to change one’s appearance or circumstances, is often triggered by an overwhelming onset of remorse for past hurts and wrongs one has committed. It strikes me that relatively few people in this post-Christian era* experience such an onset of remorse. Remorse is akin to an awareness of sin, and of sorrow for the hurt your sin has caused. An awareness of one’s sinful nature cannot easily exist outside a Christian mindset.

Why wish to change if you believe that you are already perfect in yourself? Oh - many of us desire most fervently to change our appearances; to bulk up and get some muscles; to lose weight; to become physically fitter; to look like a film star. But of the desire for inner change? There is little of that in today’s self-serving, post-sin, society. There is altogether too much self-forgiveness preached in contemporary society, and too little self-condemnation.

But given a sufficient onset of remorse and contrition, a man can experience a change within his heart as profound as that experienced by Saint Paul (still then known as Saul) on the road to Damascus. Such change is easier if you are a Christian believer, because then you know that in Christ Jesus you can become a new creation. It is necessary to stand self-convicted of sin, and to feel remorse for that sin, and to experience a sincere wish to sin no more. Then, with the help of prayer, spiritual mindfulness, and right actions, a man can change. The possibility of redemption is central to Christian belief.

A man can, when caught in the grip of a religious renewal, feel such a revulsion for the man he once was, that he sets out on the path of re-programming his nature from scratch. If he sees this process of re-programming as a religious process, as a rebirth in Christ, by grace of God, then even criminals have been known to change, and become Christian ministers; alcoholics have then been known to change and to become not just “dry,” but healed; delivered both from their mad, sad alcoholic mindset, and from their compulsive craving for liquor. The sexually incontinent have been known to acquire a new sexual morality, and become chaste. The selfish and self-centred man without compassion has been known then to become selfless and compassionate.

The sinner can then become a saint.

I hold out little hope of most of today’s secular non-believers ever experiencing the least desire to alter their natures for the better; to shed their selfishness and self-centredness; to escape the grip of their lusts; to forgive those who have hurt them. No - in today’s secular western society, “change” is all about changing the externals. Or if it seems to be about changing one’s nature, it is entirely driven by selfish desires, thus the rash of self-improvement publications. Remorse is not the driver behind the desire for self-improvement; a self-centred wish for happiness, for living an easier life, is what drives the desire for “self improvement.”

Yet a man can change. Christian literature is full of accounts of ordinary men and women who have experienced redemption; whose natures have undergone a radical change for the better; who, from being sinners, have become saints. We do not all have to become as famous for sanctity as Saint Francis, who as a very young man was a vain, pleasure-seeking, shallow, empty-headed sybarite, but who went on to change his nature so profoundly after coming to know Christ that he founded the Order of Friars Minor, the first great mendicant order - and initiated a revolution within the Church. Franciscan friars (and soon after, their sister order, the Poor Clares) would not know the settled, secure, monastic lives of the monkish orders. They would remain unfamiliar with the material securities those settled orders offered their members.

If, as a perfectly ordinary lay person, you come at last to know Christ, and your sin convicts you with sufficient force, and you experience heartfelt remorse for the harm and hurt you have done to others - then you have experienced redemption, and your nature will inevitably begin to change for the better. You will become a new creation in Christ.

In Eastern philosophy there is a belief that over many aeons, every living creature will perfect himself and return to the godhead. Some however will suffer greatly along the way, and struggle through countless lives full of misery, want and hardship, before that point is reached. Blessed are those who, having heard the Christian message, are appalled at their sinfulness, and who experience heartfelt remorse and a desire to change; they will be freed from this “wheel of life.”

I believe that the Christian path to God is the shortest and most certain of all the many paths to God. For the sinner who comes to Christ in sincere penitence will surely change his sinful nature, and come to experience redemption.

* I write from a British perspective: British society is now officially a post Christian society, in which (so the latest statistics show) only a minority in society consider themselves to be Christians. As for actual church goers: we have been a tiny minority for decades; in Scotland, less than 8% of the population regularly or frequently attends church services.