If You Could Turn Back Time

Last Sunday I turned back time, and it was really quite easy.  From March 10 through November 13 this year we were on Daylight Savings Time.  Now we are on standard time through the winter months.  Making the change was painless.  But it is not their clock that concerns people when this thought crosses their mind. 

Pop singer Cher not long ago did a song titled ‘If I Could Turn Back Time.’ In the song were the lyrics, “I don't know why I did the things I did; I don't know why I said the things I said.”  Or she could have said, ‘I don’t know why I took the path I chose, for now oh how I regret it.’ Her (our) message was/is, ‘If I could turn back time I would do it.’ The assumption is that we would do it right this time. What a blessing it would be to have a ‘new beginning.’ It is to that observation that this commentary is addressed.

I think everybody could probably say about some stage or decision in their lives, ‘I don't know why I did the things I did; I don't know why I said the things I said,’ such as saying ‘yes’ when I should have said ‘no,’ or saying ‘no when I should have said ‘yes.’ Hindsight is indeed 20-20, but at least hindsight can be a springboard to growth.  In short, many wish they could turn back time in their lives.  Is it possible? Could 'turning back time go by another name? Let’s look at this.

As noted in an earlier weblog commentary, Yogi Berra, that genial American sportsman/folk philosopher,  is reported to have said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”  I think the implied assumption that could be drawn from this ‘advice’ is that when one sees that they are on the wrong road and a different one presents itself, take the new alternative.  And that is exactly what often must be done.

But what more likely must be done, if you could, is to somehow go clear back to where you left the original path that was taking you in the most promising direction and instead of taking what then looked like an attractive-looking fork in the road or made the decision that got you in trouble, make the decision and take the necessary time, this time, and necessary steps, this time, to hold the course. 

C. S. Lewis, in his inimitable way, used the analogy of going wrong in trying to solve a mathematics problem. You don’t make it right by just trying harder and going on from where you are.  Instead, you have to go back, as far as it takes, to the point at which you made a mistake and then start your calculations again at that point and move forward.

Now the problem is, many people become so habituated in continuing to make the wrong decisions, continuing the one or more behaviors that got them into trouble in the first place (e.g., developing an addiction to some counterproductive life-style habit: food, drugs, behavioral patterns, etc.) that they feel they cannot change.  Or they are persuaded that they are genetically locked in—that they were ‘made that way.’ Or their horizons have become so limited that they cannot see outside of the prison of their own making to a truly productive ‘alternative lifestyle’ (to use a phrase that once was appropriate but that in the present time has become contaminated to rationalize sin). 

I dispute the hopeless attitude.  The negatives of a lifetime can be changed; a new direction can be taken, hope can be restored, but it will take help.  A ‘doctor,’ so to speak, will need to be employed.  On our part it will take humility and submission to change.  A wound can be sewn up, but it must first be cleaned out, and the cleansing must go at least as deep as the wound.  The doctor must be allowed to do his work.   And then it will take time to heal and therapy to restore proper function.  Damage done is damage done, but restoration can also be done.  That’s why, to change metaphors, we have car repair shops.  In fact, a good restoration shop will make the vehicle look, and depending on how far you want to go, perform even better than when it was ‘new.’ Or a house can be renovated. Or a person.  

This all leads to my last metaphorical shift—one which I believe is not a metaphor at all, but the most profound of all realities.  It is that there is a God in Heaven and He has made provision for all of us to make the changes that will need to be made, for we all have need to ‘turn back time’ and that there is, indeed, a Way. The way is to believe in God our Father who loves us and to come unto our Redeemer and Savior, His son, Jesus Christ.  The way is faith in Christ, repentance, and baptism and then, this time, learning and keeping the commandments found in the Holy Scriptures.  That is why all these things were given.    

Now there is hope, but who knows how much time?