Revision and Repentance by Shannon Stimpson

While I was teaching a freshman composition course I learned a profound lesson about repentance. As part of my curriculum, I required students to turn in drafts of their essays to me before the final versions of their papers were due. I carefully read through each draft and provided thoughtful feedback and extensive commentary about specific ways I felt the quality of the essay could be improved. It was time-consuming work, but I was committed to helping my students become better writers. I arranged a personal conference with each student to discuss my response and to address any questions or concerns they might have as they began the revision process.

For some students, recommended revisions were fairly minor—replacing a faulty example, including more evidence in a supporting paragraph, correcting grammatical errors, adding stylistic flair, and so on. But, for many students suggested changes were much more substantive—rethinking the thesis of an argument, excising an entire section, writing with greater audience awareness. Such changes required the student to do the hard work of rewriting and often rethinking how they understood a particular issue.

Most of my students were initially optimistic about making changes and felt encouraged by my suggestions. I tried to not only show them where problems existed, but also to offer ideas about how they might correct these problems. For the most part, I felt that conferencing with them was very constructive and I expected to see marked improvements in their final essays.

About a week later, I collected both the final essays and the earlier drafts. Comparing the two functioned not only as a guideline to see what changes my students made, but also as a check to see if I had failed to properly prepare my students. Although I admit I wasn’t eager to grade, I was very interested to see the changes my students made.

The first essay I picked up appeared to be identical to the draft I read a week before. In fact, as I compared the final version to the earlier draft, it quickly became apparent that my student only corrected the few spelling mistakes and grammatical problems I had highlighted as examples of the same or similar errors made throughout the entire draft. Although I had given this student almost an entire page of suggestions for major revisions and had spent over an hour conferencing with him about how to address some of the more egregious problems in his essay, he had only addressed the most superficial errors. Rather disgruntled by this, I quickly moved on to the next essay. It was a slight improvement over the last, but still failed to address faulty logic within the argument.

After reading essay after essay of students ignoring the most important recommended changes, I stopped grading because I felt too frustrated to give an objective assessment.

Recognizing that my feelings toward my students were less than charitable, I thought I would take the matter to God in prayer. I think my prayer went something like this:

Dear God, I need help. I am really, really mad at my students. Let me explain. I spent hours in the classroom teaching them principles of writing. I put aside my own work so I could finish reading their essays and probably exerted more energy commenting on their papers than they spent writing them! I gave up my free time for a week so I could meet with each student individually. I exhausted my brain thinking up constructive ways to respond to their writing—and, considering the quality of some of those papers, that was no small feat. All of that work was just so that they would actually use spell check before they turned in their essays!?! Who cares about a stupid misplaced comma when your entire argument is completely misguided? Yeah, maybe they made surface changes, but not real changes. Not the changes that matter. It’s infuriating! I’m not asking for perfection, just that they try. So, tell me what I’m supposed to do, because I’m ready to flunk them all. But, actually, I really don’t want to do that. So, please help.”

Almost immediately I got a response, which went something like this:

Dear Shannon, how many times in your life have I asked you to make changes that would help you to grow as a person? How often were you willing to make surface changes, but not to dig deep and make real, substantive changes? How many times have you brushed aside impressions, moving on with your life without doing the real work of repenting—of making significant changes your heart and mind? I understand that you’re upset with your students, but you share their struggle.

The answer took me aback. It was true. I thought about the times in my life when I knew I needed to make changes. And I did try to change, sometimes successfully; but, generally I failed to go beyond the minor, the superficial.

In that moment of self-introspection, I realized that even those small changes were good (just as correcting spelling mistakes in an essay is good) but, I had missed the opportunity for greater growth and improvement as a person because I hadn’t really changed that much.

My reflections brought to mind the words of church leader, Russell M. Nelson, who expounds scriptures from both the Bible and Book of Mormon in his description of repentance (you can read the full sermon here):

“The doctrine of repentance is much broader than a dictionary’s definition. When Jesus said ‘repent,’ His disciples recorded that command in the Greek language with the verb metanoeo.  This powerful word has great significance. In this word, the prefix meta means ‘change.’  The suffix relates to four important Greek terms: nous, meaning ‘the mind’;  gnosis, meaning ‘knowledge’;  pneuma, meaning ‘spirit’; and pnoe, meaning ‘breath.’

“Thus, when Jesus said ‘repent,’ He asked us to change—to change our mind, knowledge, and spirit—even our breath. A prophet explained that such a change in one’s breath is to breathe with grateful acknowledgment of Him who grants each breath. King Benjamin said, ‘If ye should serve him who has created you … and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath … from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants….’” 

“Yes, the Lord has commanded us to repent, to change our ways, to come unto Him, and be more like Him.  This requires a total change.”

Repentance is about a fundamental change in our very nature. It gets down to the heart of who we are. It requires looking at ourselves at a very deep level and being willing to experience changes that require ongoing effort, patience, and perseverance. What I failed to see with my students is that sometimes small changes can be the start of something wonderful, if those changes lead us to more expansive, more genuine, more committed experiences.

I asked my students to rethink the fundamental problems of their writing with the end goal of better quality papers; God asks us to give up the things that separate us from Him with the end goal of us becoming better quality people. The wonder of repentance is that through Christ’s Atonement we aren’t the same people we were before. We’re different. Changed. And not just superficially, because His love transforms us in the deepest, most sensitive, most central parts of who we are.

God will let us change as much as we want to. He celebrates even the minor changes we make in our lives, but hopes for us to make deep changes—because that’s how we really grow. The students who became the most confident with their writing and did the best in my class were those who were willing to work through my feedback and implement suggestions for improvement. Often, the result of their efforts produced wonderfully insightful, creative work that was infinitely better than anything I could have come up with. Their successes were a wellspring of satisfaction for me. And so I imagine, it must be for God when we are trying our best to improve. Of course, unlike my students, effort alone is never enough as we seek to align ourselves with God. We all rely upon the tender grace and love of Christ to free us from the burden of our imperfections. The good news is that God is always present to help us know how and what we should improve in our lives, because God is absolutely committed to our individual growth. Repentance is about the changes (both large and small) that help us realize our potential through God’s grace.