SEVERANCE part 2: The Ugly Side of Repentance

I learned to repent early and often. Before bed every night, I prayed to ask God’s forgiveness for all the wrongs I had committed that day. Usually, I made a blanket statement, “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me for everything bad I have ever done and everything good I should have done,” just to be sure I covered my bases.

Repentance is a fundamental teaching in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Members use daily repentance to be forgiven and remain clean, pure, and worthy before God. They also do so to gain greater access to his power and feel the peace of knowing they are free from sin.

I used to live for that kind of peace, but is there another way to look at it? Are there alternative experiences we don’t usually hear within the church walls?

Is there an ugly side to repentance?

Helly’s Atonement

If you haven’t watched the show yet, you can read SEVERANCE part 1: Agency for a brief synopsis.

In the first season of Severance, Helly, a redhead female character with a strong personality, had me rooting for her from the first scene. This woman doesn’t pull punches when it comes to confronting her authorities. She senses something wrong at Lumon, the company she works for, and there is no passivity in her aggression when she demands answers.

Because of her oppositional behavior, she soon discovers what Lumon calls “the breakroom”. This is where people go when they act in a noncompliant way. Helly enters the dimly lit room with her boss, a man named Milchek. He hooks her up to a polygraph test and begins the session by asking her to read aloud the following words:

“Forgive me for the harm I have caused this world. None may atone for my actions but me and only in me shall their stain live on. I am thankful to have been caught, my fall cut short by those with wizened hands. All I can be is sorry, and that is all I am.”

Each time she repeats this phrase, Milchek consults the polygraph test and responds, “You still don’t mean it.” She continues to the point of mental exhaustion, repeating the phrase hundreds of times before being released. No one leaves the breakroom until they express remorse, and mean it.

I remember clearly the steps of repentance I learned in Sunday school. Step one: feel sorry for what you did.

A Form of Control

Although even the most qualified psychologists differentiate between shame and guilt, I do not believe either to be necessary for change, even for a change of heart. Empathy, however, connects us to ourselves and each other in a positive, forward-thinking way. It enlightens our relationships with understanding and a desire to protect another’s well-being. However, I may carry a negative association with the word “guilt” because of how often it’s been used synonymously with shame. If guilt is indeed a plausible and healthy emotion, it should be used to heal our connections with other life around us, not manipulated under the essence of a fragile god.

Helly never wanted to hurt anyone. But in response to the pressure, dishonesty, and control from her authorities at Lumon, she pushed back. Her sin was against Lumon only and her required penitence was all about showing who was in charge.

There is an element of control that men in power do not have when we are left to natural remorse, that which we may feel when our actions hurt another. And so it becomes all too convenient to make God the victim of our sins when our choices seem to hurt no one else. Whether intended or not, this system of reparations to the supernatural can hijack our natural guilt or empathy, which connects us to others, and make repentance all about control.

I see this happen most around “sexual sin.” I was taught that any sexuality outside of heterosexual marriage would only lead to anguish and remorse and that this was a natural consequence. But from what I have experienced and observed in others’ relationships, this guilt isn’t natural at all, but rather learned by the conditioning we receive from our ideologies. Leaders of the church have gone so far as to say that even couples who engage in loving and consensual sexual relations outside of marriage have “crucified Christ afresh” (source).

My Time in the Breakroom

After moving away to college, I quickly experienced a spiritual revival initiated by the Institute of Religion classes I attended. One class specifically centered around Jesus Christ’s atonement. We learned there that changing behavior was not enough. One must feel remorse for breaking God’s commandments, confess serious sins to their bishop (aka sexual sin), and receive forgiveness through the Lord’s mercy.

My thoughts turned back two years. I had broken the commandments, even some of the serious ones. Never mind the low self-esteem, fears about the future, or the sexual harassment that broke down my convictions to stay “pure”. I had committed a crime against God. Though I was in a better place now—I had friends who elevated my self-confidence, I had a plan for my future, and I was on what would turn out to be a five-year break from dating—it wasn’t enough. I knew what I needed to do: feel remorse to match the grievousness of my sins, repent in figurative sackcloth and ashes, and receive forgiveness from God for the wrongs I had committed against him.

My only hangup? I didn’t feel sorry. How could I be? I didn’t hurt anyone. If anything, they had hurt me. But I was guilty of hurting God.

So I did what I had to. I bought a book called The Miracle of Forgiveness.

This book was notorious for invoking guilt and shame. I skipped to the most potent paragraphs and read them over and over, trying to internalize the severity of my actions.

... Your sin is the most serious thing you could have done in your youth this side of murder. ...You made covenant that you would never have such ungodly relations… Your virtue is worth more than your life.

Those who have received the Holy Ghost after baptism certainly know that all bodily contacts of this kind are pernicious and abominable. They recognize too that the God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow continues to demand continence and to require that people come to the marriage altar as virgins, clean and free from sex experience…

All those who have slipped into the disgraceful and most reprehensible habit of transgressing… should immediately change their lives, their habits, and their thought patterns, repent sorely in "sackcloth and ashes," and by confession get so far as possible a clearance from the Lord and the leaders of his Church so that a measure of peace may accompany them through their lives. To those who have been properly taught and who have properly appraised the evils and have restrained and protected themselves from these foul acts, God bless them and help them to continue their virginity and cleanness, that they may never have the remorse and anguish which has or will come to their brothers and sisters who have indulged.”

After ingesting these messages for some time, I pieced together enough remorse to confess my wrongs to my bishop. I was subsequently forgiven “by God and by the church.” Unsurprisingly, however, the shame I had manufactured through the words of church leaders returned time and again for the next several years until I deconstructed my beliefs.

Manufactured Guilt

It does not matter that The Miracle of Forgiveness has been removed from the shelves at Deseret Book. It does not matter that these words were written by a dead prophet. It does not matter that we emphasize current prophets as the measure by which we should follow.

Every prophet was once current. And no amount of excuses about needing different things at different times can justify telling people that their lives are of less value than their purity. As long as we continue to endorse certain mouths of men by their office in the priesthood and their position in the church, our believing members will always be vulnerable to spiritual and emotional manipulation. In coming decades we may find some current teachings of the church today to be just as reprehensible as the problematic teachings of the past. Many (including myself) already do.

I would venture to say that most latter-day saints of mature age have had their time in the breakroom as I have, whether in prayer or a bishop’s office. But even when such experiences result in a sense of peace and forgiveness, is this relief an answer to a change of heart? Or to the burden manufactured by guilt-inducing doctrines?

My experience in the bishop’s office was a lucky one. He did not ask me for inappropriate details or cast shame as is common in these systematically vulnerable situations. The day I walked out of my confession I had a very real experience of feeling healed. I was filled to the brim with love, but it was not the feeling of a cleansing of sin. Rather it felt like a relief from the wounds that had broken down my self-worth. Many of those wounds came directly from the doctrines I had internalized throughout my life.

Eventually, these wounds continued and became too much for me. I had to let go of the beliefs I once held. And that is when the true cleansing and healing began. I don’t repent anymore, but I do change a lot. I am always learning, healing, and mending relationships where I sometimes cause a disconnect. Rarely do I feel that intense forgiveness that I once needed to believe I was good. Now I feel peace every day knowing I already am. I always have been.

Perhaps we would be better served if we stripped the role of prophet and apostle and instead called them what they are: presidents. And to a president, a bishop, or any other leader who has done nothing to earn the remission of my self-worth or personal authority, I second Helly’s later sentiment: “I am not sorry. I never was.”