The proper response to sin is not excessive sorrow or self-loathing, but an effort to learn and do better

"My religion rains obligations, but it is notably free, except in some of its more stringent and sectarian versions, of the worst terrors of sin. The compassion is even in the etymology: in Hebrew, the arrow that misses its target 'sins' against it.[1] The proper response to imperfection is not despair. It is another arrow."

-–Leon Wieseltier, Washington Diarist: My Secret Life, The New Republic, June 3, 2009, p. 48 (emphasis and footnote added).

[1] DCT note:  The Hebrew word for ‘sin’ is het, to err or miss the mark; ditto the Greek hamartia [link]. Likewise, the Greek word usually translated as ‘repentance’ is metanoia, a change of mind and heart.