BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jewish belief holds that during Rosh Hashana the righteous are inscribed for life in the divine ledgers and the wicked are sentenced to death, with the rest given 10 days to repent.
Rosh Hashana begins tonight at sundown. In an ordinary year, these Days of Awe are a time for the faithful to review their transgressions from the previous year and seek forgiveness. But as the presidential crisis over adultery and perjury unfolds, the weeks leading up to the High Holy Days have given all Americans a chance to reflect on the meaning and practice of repentance.
Cincinnati-area clergy from across faith traditions stress that repentance is a marathon, not a sprint -- that a complex formula of acknowledgement, apology and action is necessary to make up for wrongdoing.
And while they stress God's forgiveness is given freely, they say that human forgiveness usually takes a bit longer and requires a delicate balance of justice and mercy.
"When we pray during the High Holy Days, we say it takes tefillah, t'shuvah and tzedakah -- prayer, repentance and good deeds. There is a formula given," said Rabbi Arthur Flicker of Congregation Ohav Shalom in Sycamore Township, who spoke about President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky last week in a service leading up to Rosh Hashana.
"There needs to be changed behavior. There needs to be acts of righteousness and kindness to others. It's not punishment, but you need to go out and do acts of righteousness as a form of penance."
Conversations about the Clinton-Lewinsky matter arose in religious circles in January when the scandal broke, and many continue to view it more as a moral crisis than a political or legal one.
Mr. Clinton chose the annual White House prayer breakfast to begin using terms such as sin and repentance, and he has asked a group of ministers to meet with him regularly to help him refrain from temptation. In the president's address to clergy, many locals saw in Mr. Clinton the first step toward repentance: an acknowledgement of sin and a plea for forgiveness from those who have been wronged. But how can one know for sure if the sinner is sincere?
"I would expect that anyone who seeks forgiveness, you'd find them to be sincere in their asking; and I assume that they are sincere when they come asking. I'm looking for signs in their demeanor that speak to their repentance -- such as body language," said the Rev. Dr. Taylor Thompson, pastor of Quinn Chapel AME Church in Forest Park. "When President Clinton shared his statement on this at the prayer breakfast, I felt there was great deal of sincerity there."
But the gesture to the wronged party is only the beginning of what Jews call t'shuvah -- which literally means "return," as in a return to where one should be. In Judaism, the penitent is allowed to approach God for forgiveness only after he has asked the wronged party for forgiveness.
Many Christian denominations have specific practices such as Catholic confession or an accountability group -- actions that allow, as one clergy member who attended the White House breakfast said, a move from "the rhetoric of repentance to the rituals of repentance."
And even when the rituals are done, the process is not complete. "Another aspect of repentance is to be faced with same situation once again and to not do it," said Rabbi Lewis Kamrass of Isaac M. Wise Temple in Amberley Village. "One can ask for forgiveness and go back and do it once again and the repentance is not complete."
So when one's confession is sincere, the wronged party has received a plea for forgiveness, and God and righteous acts and changed behavior are all in place, what else remains?
The consequences, said Dr. Terry L. Fields, pastor of Pisgah Heights - Liberty Heights Baptist Church in West Chester and a Southern Baptist like Mr. Clinton.
"What Bill Clinton is sitting down to now is a table of consequences," Dr. Fields said. "The consequences are still there. And I couldn't respect a God, quite honestly, that swept sin under the rug and didn't show us there is a sense of order in the world. Where would the sense of order be if a simple apology discounted the serious consequences of sin?"
A saying from 19th-century Baptist pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Dr. Fields said, gives a clue as to when the process is complete: "Forgiveness can be fully experienced when your repentance becomes as notorious as your sin."
If the sinner's task is lengthy and difficult, several clergy members said, human nature suggests the wronged have a long haul, too. Although Christianity in particular demands that people grant each other free and full forgiveness as often as they sin, no one says it is easy.
"Forgiveness from a human standpoint is not instantaneous as it is with God. We have to mull over and think about all of the effects of what has happened before we can really say, "I forgive you,' " said the Rev. Joycelyn W. Joseph, pastor of California Columbia United Methodist Church in California, Ohio. "But if they realize the basic fact that God has forgiven them, then they should be readily available to forgive others. That's the basic core of forgiveness, knowing you have been forgiven by God."
And some warn that a failure to forgive can be as damaging as the sin committed. The Rev. Albert Lauer, pastor of Old St. Mary's Catholic Church in Over-the-Rhine, estimates that more than 90 percent of the problems people bring to him stem from an inability to forgive.
Father Lauer recounts the New Testament story of the Prodigal Son, in which a man who wastes his inheritance on illicit pleasure is welcomed back by a joyous father, as the man's straitlaced brother sulks about the injustice of it all.
"The guy's a mess. He's got anger, he's alienated from his family, he's alienated from his father, he thinks of himself as a slave. All hell's broken loose because he can't forgive his brother," Father Lauer said.
Until people learn to forgive, Father Lauer said, "you're really not able to pray without your prayer backfiring on you. You're not able to be forgiven. You're not able to get rid of the deadly effects of sin."
