I agree with a lot of what GodsGadfly says. As someone who struggles with scruples, I can tell the OP to be very careful when considering having a firm purpose of amendment and properly making restitution to make a valid confession and what that entails. If you’re like me, you can end up taking things to the extreme to the point of despair.
Like GodsGadfly said, it’s hard to find someone with a lot of wealth who didn’t in some way contribute to that wealth with something sinful. Heck, it’s probably hard to find someone at any level of personal means without some type of sin in his past that contributed to where he is today.
Think about this. An obvious example is one like the OP mentioned: someone steals money, obtains certain benefits because of that, but then later wants to confess and repent. So is he supposed to give back everything that he ever gained by the illicit funds? That certainly could pose an overwhelming problem for someone depending on how long ago it was that he stole the money, especially if he now has a family who has to endure his penance with him in trying to give everything back.
And that’s the most obvious example. What about the less obvious? How about someone who received a promotion years ago by exaggerating his qualifications or withholding certain information? It’s no secret that in today’s job market, it’s very difficult to obtain gainful employment in many sectors if you don’t promote yourself as well as possible while competing against other candidates who will do just that. And recruiters / employers expect people to play up their qualifications when they apply for a job. That doesn’t bode well for someone who wants to attempt to be 100% honest with absolutely nothing that could possibly be considered an exaggeration or withholding of information. If you’re scrupulous, you’ll be hard on yourself and probably downplay all of your qualifications and feel like all kinds of negative details in your background need to be divulged in order to avoid sinning. Good luck finding a decent-paying job, then.
So if someone finds himself in the position where he feels that some type of promotion or job he received in the past was based in any way on exaggeration of his skills, an exaggerated recommendation from someone else, not fully disclosing some type of derogatory information, or anything else that could possibly be considered deceitful or not 100% accurate and honest, he’s probably in deep spiritual trouble. Now he has to try to calculate every single thing he gained from that initial sin. Let’s say he got further promotions / opportunities down the road. He probably wouldn’t have been in a position to get those promotions / opportunities if he hadn’t gotten the initial promotion. He probably wouldn’t have met many of the people he met by getting his new position, or made those connections. He might not have taken some of the same business trips, been in the same places at the same time, been in a position to find out about new opportunities, promotions, deals, or any other number of objective or subjective positive benefits to add to the quality of his life. Heck, he might not have been in the position to meet his current wife, friends, etc, therefore making many things in his current life benefits based in some way on sin.
What about an even more extreme example regarding sin in someone’s past? What if someone cheated on a test or paper in college, or even high school? That college degree, which he used to get a job, is now based on a sin and is not entirely legitimate. Going further back, if the cheating occurred in high school, the high school degree and grade point average, which he used to get into college, which he then used to get a college degree, which he then used to get a job, which he then used to get further promotions, jobs, etc, was not entirely legitimate.
Here’s another one: what if you’re married, but leading up to that marriage, you and your spouse engaged in some kind of sinful, sexual behavior, however small? It could be argued that your attraction to each other might have been based in some small part on some type of sinful behavior you engaged in together. Therefore, perhaps your marriage was contributed to by the increased attraction from this sinful behavior. Can you make restitution for this? Do you have to “undo” your marriage?
How about this: have you heard of the notion of putting in an “honest day of work”? Well, exactly what does that entail? There tends to be a lot of “down time” in many jobs. This is where it gets extremely subjective. Maybe you could have found something more to do during this “down time” but didn’t. Maybe instead of waiting at your desk for the next task, you could have cleaned up, re-read company policies, created some kind of new task you could do, etc. It’s probably a rare occasion where a person can honestly say he couldn’t have possibly done more during a day at work. So have you met the standard required for putting in an “honest day”? If you’re overly scrupulous, that standard can be hard to meet. So what do you do? Donate huge portions of your salary from all of your working years to charity? Good luck coming up with the money to make full restitution for that. And how can you have a firm purpose of amendment to make a valid confession while you are still employed and know that there will be many more days where you could have done more work but didn’t? Do you have to wait until you’re retired to finally be able to make a valid confession?
If you really analyze this, a small sin in someone’s past can probably be linked in some way to nearly every facet of his life today. In trying to “pay back” everything accrued as a result of or linked to a sin, you could easily end up utterly destroying yourself. How can you possibly undo everything you have gained that was based on or linked in any way to past sinful behavior? And how can you have a true firm purpose of amendment enough to make a valid confession?
I have struggled with such questions before and believe me, it is a road you don’t want to go down. I’ve had points where I’ve thought that the only thing a person can do to redeem himself for all the wrongs he has committed is give up every single possession he has and join a monastery. Of course, that could also be based on sin, as he wouldn’t be in such a position to entertain that idea if he wasn’t struggling from the despair of past sins. Do you see what I mean? It never ends.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. You could go on, and on, and on with a nearly unlimited number of examples of how some type of past sin, large or small, played a part in benefits you enjoy today. So in preparing for a valid confession, trying to right past wrongs and make restitution, be very careful how far you take it. You could end up utterly annihilating yourself otherwise.
