Lent calls Christians to repentance — not doubling down

By Walter Hesford | FāVS News Columnist

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. 

In the Chistian community, this is Lent, a time for reflection and repentance. But for Christians living in the U.S., this is also a time when we continue to hear that our beloved leader Trump is “doubling down” on all manner of military, political and cultural actions, doubling down at our and the world’s risk.

Repenting and doubling down seem to be opposite activities. To do the former requires thoughtful self-examination; to do the latter reveals the desire to win at all costs.

What does it really mean to repent?

I was surprised to learn from vocabulary.com that doubling down has its roots in blackjack (a.k.a.” 21”), which I played as a kid. When I said “hit me again” to the dealer though I had cards that already totaled 19 points, I was doubling down

I was also surprised to learn that though a common dictionary meaning for repentance is to feel sorry, in the Hebrew of the Bible to repent is not just a feeling but an action. To repent (shuv) is to turn back, to return.

Turn back to or return to what? To whom? In Judaism, the prophets repeatedly call for the people to return to God. Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, in which a wayward son returns to a loving, forgiving father, is commonly interpreted as revealing how our loving God will welcome us if we repent and return to God the Father. (Luke 15:11-32) 

In Christianity, the call often is to return to Jesus himself. How well I remember hearing during the late 1950s Tennessee Ernie Ford sing on his TV show “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling,” a hymn written in 1880 by Will L. Thompson. “Come home, come home,” urges the chorus, “you who are weary come home. / Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling, / Calling, o sinner, come home!”

What sinner in the Christian fold who had strayed could resist this call to repentance, to come home to Jesus, to be embraced by his love, to recommit oneself to follow his ways?

What about those outside the fold?

But what if one is not in the Christian fold, or any fold? What if one has no Jesus, or Father God, or Buddha, or Mohammed, or [blank] … to which to return? Is one doomed to dwell in the dominant culture of arrogant doubling down? 

The Bible suggests something else to which we all can, all will, return: dust. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return,” the LORD God tells Adam. (Genesis 3:19) This fate of the first human is the fate of all of us mortals.

In my experience, this passage from Genesis is often and appropriately read at funerals when Earth is sprinkled on coffins. It is also read on Ash Wednesday at the outset of Lent when many Christians receive a cross of ashes on their foreheads. On this day we are called to repent, to remember our mortality and to prepare for a season of serious reflection.

This reminder that we are but dust may seem gloomy, but in her Lenten reflection on this passage from Genesis, Linnéa Clark in her 2025 “All in Lenten Devotional” suggests that our dustiness relates us to every other creature on Earth and of course to the Earth itself. As Indigenous peoples have always reminded us, our relatedness should cause us to care for the welfare of our fellow creatures and of the Earth.

Lent would be a good time to double down not on arrogant and violent displays of power, but on a humble repentance that cultivates a culture of care.

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