Allowing the Atonement

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**although the facts of this story are true, I have changed the names to protect the character and reputation of those mentioned therein**

As we talk about repentance and the atonement, I think we miss a great opportunity to encourage our friends and neighbors to follow a path to reformation. We frequently do not allow them to overcome the resolved issues of the past, and in so doing we harm them and retard their progress. I have been the recipient of such unwillingness to leave the past in the past and an observer in the case of other people, but I was surprised to realize today that I have not been, for some time, a perpetrator of this injustice.

My real only friend as a freshman in High School was a member of my Faith named Richard, who was a senior. Richard and I, being the only members of my Faith who went to lunch concurrently, would sit together at lunch and discuss what we had read and learned in the scriptures. Frequently he came prepared with analogies and visual aids. I wrote page after page in my journal inspired by our conversations. Yet, for all of this synergy, all was not well with my friend Richard. Several members of my congregation as well as fellow students and parents expressed concerns about my friendship with Richard.

About a year before, Richard had been heavily involved in drugs. I remembered, once they brought this up, that I had seen Richard in the hallways a few times at church. However, I did not know that Richard; the Richard I knew was a man of faith and conviction who was making something very good of his life and troublesome circumstances. As far as I was concerned, the old Richard was dead; the new Richard was a man born in Christ, a new man, a new life, and in my opinion he was a man of virtue.

We read in the scriptures that "whosoever repents of his sins shall be forgiven, and I the Lord will remember them no more". CS Lewis writes in Mere Christianity of the New Men. I really felt a year later when I read Lewis that Richard was one of the New Men. If it was good enough for the Lord to forgive Richard his past, it was good enough for me. I never did meet that version of Richard, and the one I knew is the one who has been made permanent in the 19 years hence.

If a man cannot be allowed to move beyond his past, he must always be defined by it, regardless of his present. Some of the worst among us insist that they be integrated continuously and only in the moment while they hold our mistakes against us, even when we have made amends. Even worse, sometimes we extend guilt by association and force others to suffer for the mistakes of innocents. When we make men hang forever for a single moment of time, we in essence deny the Christ. It is not simply to deny his name but also his divinity, his atonement, and his ability to make men better. Only when we allow the atonement can we really prove that we value the sacrifice and service of the Savior.