“This expression shall not be changed,” is the unyielding direction, heavily underlined, given by Mark Twain in the manuscript for his masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn. The “expression” he intended editors not to change was this line from the runaway slave, Jim:

            “De Lord God Almighty forgive po’ ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne forgive hisself as long as he lives.”*

            What Jim cannot forgive of himself - what Huck finds him weeping about in the night – is the memory of a moment of anger, a moment when he struck his daughter Elizabeth. Twain, perhaps, felt so strongly about preserving Jim’s expression of guilt, because he bore a similar burden. He felt personally responsible for the death of at least four souls when he penned those words. The first occurred when as a boy in Hannibal, Missouri he dared a young friend named Dutchy to see how long he could stay under water. Dutchy got entangled in willow poles local coopers were soaking in the river and drowned. Young Sam Clemens was the boy who dove in and discovered his friend held fast under the water. When Clemens was a teenager, he procured a match for a man being held in the Hannibal, Missouri jail – with which the man burned down the jail and killed himself.  Later, when he was a Pilot on a Mississippi river boat Clemens secured a position for his younger brother Henry on the Steamboat Pennsylvania. Henry was killed when one of the four boilers on the Pennsylvania exploded and he was fatally scalded.

Henry was not killed immediately, but lingered in pain for days. Fourteen years later his two-year old son Langdon died of diphtheria. Twain believed that his taking the toddler out in the cold without sufficiently warm clothing was the cause of Langdon’s death. The expression “the Lord God Almighty forgive him because he’ll never forgive himself,” was a prayer that must have visited Twain most nights.

            I have a saying which I repeat frequently enough to qualify it as a slogan: “Grace is immediate and absolute.” It is.  But we must also remember a thought from Bonhoffer – Grace is free, but it isn’t cheap. It isn’t – it cost the blood of Christ.  I’m not saying that we should carry the burden of guilt around that Jim carried in literature, or that Twain carried in real life – but it is important to remember that we are dependent on God to forgive. It is important to remember what we have been forgiven of, if we are to appreciate forgiveness – be transformed by it.

            In the New Testament, the word translated “repentance” is a compound of the preposition “with/after”, and the word “comprehension.” To repent is to have gained comprehension, to have understood, to have learned the lesson. How can one repent without remembering? How could Paul have exclaimed: If he hadn’t first said he was “the worst sinner” (I Timothy 1.12-17)? 

            I am saying that feeling the full force of the wrong we have done will allow us to fully appreciate the grace we are given. When that happens - when we brave repentance instead of settling for regret, we will be transformed:

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in this matter. (II Corinthians 7.10-11 ESV).

            No, this expression should not be changed.                     

*Speak What We Feel (Not What We Ought to Say), Frederick Buechner, Harper/Collins, 2001, p.70.