Sometimes \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d is a selfish thing to say.<\/p>\n
Sounds strange, doesn\u2019t it? After all, repentance is a cornerstone of the Christian walk, right? Sadly, I can assure you that it is indeed quite possible to spout humble-sounding words of apology more in self-protection than in real repentance aimed at real reconciliation.<\/p>\n
The basic dynamic of phony repentance works like this: I say I\u2019m sorry in an effort to make the \u201coffended\u201d person feel better about me or to make me<\/em> feel better about me. Whereas Scripture calls us to seek forgiveness for sins that have harmed others, self-serving apologies aim to deflect someone\u2019s possible disappointment in us or to soothe our own inner discomfort.<\/p>\n Of course, I am not intending any of this when I say \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d! When I call these apologies \u201cphony,\u201d I do not mean that I realized they are phony or had any idea that I was being self-serving. But so much of our sin is that way\u2014we don\u2019t even know we\u2019re doing it. Just because we don\u2019t know we\u2019re doing it, however, doesn\u2019t mean it isn\u2019t causing harm.<\/p>\n Self-serving apologies do their damage by functioning as relational pre-emptive strikes. A friend apologizes all<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d is a selfish thing to say. Sounds strange, doesn\u2019t it? After all, repentance is a cornerstone of the Christian walk, right? Sadly, I can assure you that it is indeed quite possible to spout humble-sounding words of apology more in self-protection than in real repentance aimed at real reconciliation. The basic dynamic [\u2026]
\nThe post When Saying \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d Is Selfish appeared first on Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[281],"tags":[669,472,693],"class_list":["post-26965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-counseling-educational-foundation-ccef","tag-blog-posts","tag-communication","tag-repentance","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26965"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26968,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26965\/revisions\/26968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}