I don’t know that you could say I’m a Sylvester Stallone fan; surely not enough to refer to him as ‘Sly’, but I will say to his credit he’s no Frank Sinatra. and, again to his credit, he speaks more understandably than Schwarzenegger, and though effete like Tom Cruise in stature (5’ 9’ and 5’ 7” respectively), unlike Cruise he’s not in mannerism.
Why do I say Stallone is no Sinatra? Because in a 2025 interview he said, “When people say they have no regrets, I want to laugh. Really? My god, I should have ‘regrets’ tattooed across my forehead” (Tannenbaum, Rob, “The Sly you never knew”, AARP, The Magazine, September 2025, 41).
I think in the matter of regrets Stallone is more realistic than Sinatra who sang in 1969 (about 30 years from his death) “Regrets, I’ve had a few/ But then again, too few to mention.”[i] People do have more than a few regrets, however, interestingly enough you don’t find the word regrets in most English translations of the Bible. For example, you only have two results in the New King James Version and 16 in the Amplified Bible. it seems the more modern the translation the more that word is used. The NASSB77 only has “regret” five times and “regrets” not at all. It does have words like “despair”, “sorrow”, “bitterness”, or something along those lines.
Nevertheless, regrets are real and if as Proverbs 13:12 says ” hope deferred makes the heart sick”, I think regrets can make the heart even sicker. In a sense regrets aren’t hopes not deferred but permanently deflated? Why? Because you’re regrets are mostly about your real and imagined sins that haunt you, and they are all in the past. In the Netflix’s documentary, Stallone likens them to things passing by in a window on a moving train. By the time you regret them; they are gone.
Here’s the important thing about regrets. They are always about the past and that does not belong to us anymore than the future does. When we attempt to dabble in either the past or the future we’re trespassing on the domain of God. No good thing can come from that.
Both past and future belong under the God who redeemed both in the Person and Work of Christ so much so that not our sins, not our regrets, not our hauntings can deprive us of that redemption. So while a sick heart may be indicative of a hope deferred, a regretful one may be indicative of a sin we think still alive not having been put all the way to death on the cross and buried with Christ.
So if you look in the mirror and like Stallone see “regret” tattooed across your forehead, stop looking in the mirror and start looking in the waters of your Baptism, in the Words of your pastor, in the Body and Blood given and shed for you on the cross and given once more for you to eat and drink at the communion rail not only without regret but in peace.
[i] Sinatra Lovers would be interested in knowing that “My Way” was originally of French composition and the English version (I’m not sure if ‘translation’ is correct or not.) is by Paul Anka.
