Should time cancel sin?

Should time wash away the worst atrocities of the world?

If not that, maybe it should at least clear us of our more minor infractions?

Ok, how about this one then?

If I steal your bike, and never give it back, is that wrong made right with the passage of a week? A month? A year? 50 years?

A change of heart, forgiveness, and reconciliation (or consequence) seems to be the only way through.

Of course, this has other implications in the context of religion.

Thank goodness that grace is there every day (from those that love us) when we choose wrong.

We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin.

-C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain (Amazon)