All four gospels say that Jesus was crucified between two thieves. Neither Mark nor John give us any additional information about the two thieves, and Matthew says they both joined the chief priests in mocking and ridiculing Jesus, as he was dying. Only in Luke 23:39-43 do we find an account which says that one of the thieves repented and asked Jesus to remember him in paradise. If one believes both Matthew’s and Luke’s versions, repentance for this man must have come in mid-crucifixion, not at the beginning.
Now fast forward to May 9, 2007, where a condemned man named Philip Workman was executed by the state of Tennessee for the murder of a Memphis policeman named Ron Oliver in 1981 during the robbery of a Wendy’s restaurant. The robbery was supposed to help Workman get money for his drug habit. Later, in prison, Philip Workman claimed to be a changed man. He committed his spirit to Jesus Christ just before he was given the lethal injection which ended his life.
I’m familiar with this case because I lived in Nashville for two years, during which Workman’s lawyers were filing appeals, appealing both his death penalty and his conviction. He claimed Ron Oliver was actually shot accidentally by another policeman, not by Workman, though he acknowledged the 1981 Wendy’s robbery, and he acknowledged shooting at police during the robbery. I don’t know how long he advanced the “it wasn’t my bullet” theory, nor do I know when he claimed to have become a Christian. Both claims go back at least as far as 1999 when I moved to Nashville.
Just for the sake of argument, I’m going to accept both of his claims, though many people may not accept either of them. I actually believe his conversion to Christianity was probably genuine, but I wonder if it was as genuine as it should have been. Whether he fired the fatal shot or not, it was clearly his fault that Ron Oliver is no longer with us. I don’t know anything about Ron Oliver’s family, but most policemen have spouses and families, and my assumption is that this robbery not only caused the officer’s death, but it created a widow, orphans, and many other grieving family members and friends, who have no court to which they can appeal.
I mentioned the thief on the cross at the beginning, because it seems to me that his repentance was much deeper than Philip Workman’s. I suspect he was crucified less than a week after his crime, and quite possibly the next day. It’s worth noting that he asked Jesus to “remember me when you come in your kingly glory”. He did not say, “Jesus, get me off this cross and let me go about my business. I have repented and I am no longer a danger to society. Surely you can see that. Besides, it would be really impressive if you did one last miracle.” That’s probably what Philip Workman would have said. Workman and
his legal team filed appeals for 26 years, and they caused Ron Oliver’s family and friends to wait an entire generation for justice, and I suspect Philip Workman’s legal bills were paid by the taxpayers of Tennessee, and I used to be one of them.
I get no joy from Philip Workman’s death. Perhaps he had become a harmless human being, and perhaps I might spend eternity with him. But repentance, first and foremost, means taking responsibility for one’s own actions and facing the consequences for them. It doesn’t mean hiring the best possible lawyers, it doesn’t mean blaming others. Repentance doesn’t claim an unhappy childhood, it doesn’t blame addiction, it doesn’t blame a chemical imbalance in the brain or the wrong medications, and it doesn’t even blame the devil for the inspiration of evil. In fact, the fruit of real repentance is found in Luke 19:8:
“So then Zacchaeus stood up and solemnly declared to the Lord, See, Lord, the half of my goods I [now] give [by way of restoration] to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone out of anything, I [now] restore four times as much.”
That sort of repentance is desperately needed in our society today. It’s needed in our churches. It’s needed among our celebrities and our athletes. It’s needed in the media and on college campuses. It’s needed in business and it’s needed by labor. It’s needed by every race, by both genders, by the rich and the poor. It’s badly needed in both political parties, which are full of people seeking power for themselves, instead of pursuing peace with friend and foe alike, while they serve the nation. Many of our political leaders are on a binge of self-promotion, blaming their political opponents even for the weather. Our lack of repentance has reached such grotesque proportions that most states have felt compelled to pass laws allowing mothers to abandon their babies at hospitals, fire and police stations, or churches. We’ve built bureaucracies to try to compel fathers to pay for the support of children they conceived, whether or not they have any access to those children. We want our news to be “fair and balanced” instead of true, and our news is hardly ever the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
I could go on and on and on. But I won’t, because most people would just read it and think I’m talking about someone else. But the most important thing about repentance is that it first looks in the mirror. Only later does it look at someone else. My job is to figure out what I can do better, and I hope whoever reads this will look in the mirror and ask themselves what they can do better.
