Part 3½: The Words We Lost

Let’s start with my confession.

I grew up in the Catholic Church. And while I suppose the word repent was in there somewhere—tucked into the readings from the lectern—it wasn’t the word we were taught to use.

The word was confess.

Confession was a sacrament. It had structure. A process. A booth.

So from the time I was a wee little girl, I was taught to go into a dark wooden box, kneel behind a screen, and tell a man I didn’t know what I had done wrong. To say it out loud.

Now, to be clear, my childhood confessions weren’t exactly scandalous.
“I lied to my parents.”
“I got mad at my sister.”
That sort of thing.

But the architecture of it—the rhythm of kneeling, the hush, the guilt—sank in.

The message was clear:
You are wrong. You must confess. Then maybe—just maybe—you can be forgiven.

My foundation was built on guilt and shame.
Spoken softly. Framed in ritual. But heavy all the same.

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Then in high school, I began to transition to Protestantism.
Cool—no more confessional.

Instead, we were told to repent. Same shame. Different word.

A spiritual time-out. A grim moment where you were supposed to grovel before God, recount every failure, and promise to never screw up again.

It felt like a courtroom. And I was always guilty.

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That’s where I want to pause. Let’s set the memory aside (more to come later).

The English word repent drips with guilt. But the original Hebrew word?
It isn’t about shame.

There’s been a gross injustice done in the translation of God’s words.
Not just a poor choice. Not just a bad synonym—
A full distortion.

The word we translate as repent comes from the Hebrew: teshuvah.

And teshuvah doesn’t mean grovel.
Or turn away.
Or even turn back.

It doesn’t mean punishment.
It doesn’t even mean “say you’re sorry.”

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📖 Hosea 14:1 (14:2 in Hebrew)

“Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.”
שׁוּבָה יִשְׂרָאֵל עַד־יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ

This is teshuvah—a return to who you were created to be, not just a confession.

Teshuvah means return.
Return to your source.
Return to the path.
Return to the One who shaped you before you were even aware of your own name.

It is movement, yes—but not away from guilt.
It’s movement toward wholeness. Toward home.

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Here’s where Jerry usually tells me, “This is just semantics…”

Okay, so, let’s go there.

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Semantics (n.): The study of meaning in language—how words, phrases, and sentences carry meaning, and how that meaning shifts depending on culture, tone, and translation.

When someone says, “It’s just semantics,” what they usually mean is:
“You’re arguing over words.”

But that’s actually the whole point.

Words carry frameworks.
They’re not just labels. They shape how we think, how we feel, how we experience truth.

So yes—this may sound like semantics. But semantics shape everything.

If we change the meaning of a word, we lose the meaning of God’s truth.

And that’s when crap happens…