Richard L. Evans wrote:
Repentance is a subject that is sometimes shunned. But repentance is a very practical principle and plays a very important part in human progress. This is so because, in a sense no one moves forward in any way without repentance. Increasing individual or industrial efficiency is a kind of repentance—by the abandoning of wasteful ways and by following better ways. Applying improved processes in any undertaking is a form of repentance.
The process of growing up and leaving behind childish ways, as increasing wisdom comes is a kind of repentance. But when an adult reverts to childish ways or persists in unenlightened practices, or when they conduct in conflict with conscience or in conflict with the commandments of God, to that extent they prove them self to be unrepentant—and therefore unprogressive. The unrepentant person turns their face to the darkness instead of to the light. They follow ways they know to be full of evil and error—evil if only in the sense that this conduct doesn’t conform to their best knowledge. In other words when a person knows better than he does and persists in acting in error, they are unrepentant, and are, therefore, unprogressive.
They who do not repent of breaking the laws of health will pay the price of ill health. The person or the institution that doesn’t repent of spending beyond their means will pay the price of their *prodigality. Any individual or organization, any nation or people must pay a price for unrepentance—even if it is only the price of holding themselves back from what they might have been. A successful life is a life of constant improvement, a life that seeks earnestly to abandon old errors. In short, repentance is the very essence of progress, and an unrepentant person is an unprogressive person. Even from a very practical point of view no person can afford to be unrepentant. ~Richard Evans, Thoughts for one hundred days (Publishers Press: Salt Lake City, 1966) 164-5
*Prodigality definition: wasteful extravagance in spending.
