what you believe isn’t what you say you believe, it’s what you do

confess (v.) to grant; to admit; not to dispute

I am unable to think of any behavior more pivotal to the Christian faith than the confession of one’s sin. That perplexes me. I don’t know why, it just does. And not that it’s a bad thing either, but simply the way my mind works when it comes down to it.

I think the Church has it right encouraging people to consider the sin nature that lives inside of them. But, honestly, does it make sense to tell a person they are going to hell if they don’t repent or tell God they are sorry for all the wrong things they have done? I don’t think it does. I think it just pushes people even further from a relational God who wants to know them.

I feel as though my perception of what it means to confess has changed quite a lot over the years: one from telling God I’m sorry to actually owning the evil and wickedness that lives inside of me and trusting that God hears me and loves me regardless of my sin. Because in reality, we all sin, we are not Holy- and it is indeed a fallacy to think otherwise.

I don’t think God is particularly fond of hearing sorry, but we as humans are, which is probably why we use the term so liberally. The word sorry has a functional purpose in our vernacular as something that relieves guilt from a personal standpoint. If you know you have wronged someone, simply saying sorry to them will make you feel better because you understand that it is what you should say: it is something that has been ingrained into us since we were children, and along with that socialization comes an enormous sense of familiarity and comfort. Because the truth of the matter is I can tell the African-American kid I called a “brownie” in 5th grade I’m sorry every day for the next ten years, but it won’t make a difference if if my heart still remains cold. I mean, what I said to that kid in 5th grade was racist. My parents aren’t racist, my family isn’t; I learned about the civil rights movement in school and listened to Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, yet somehow racism was alive in my heart. Sorry is just a word that people attach feelings to. Feelings are powerful. Most of them are complete bullshit.

We talked about what happened probably a year ago and I told him that I told him I never felt like I ever meant it when I casually told him I was sorry in 5th grade. All I knew was that I got caught, was in trouble, and saying sorry was the only think I could think of to help stay out of even more trouble, because in all honesty I wasn’t. I still went on thinking I was better. It was pride. It was the condition of my heart.

We’re friends now.

I didn’t hate that kid. I hated myself.

…

I was never truly sorry because I could not forgive myself. I was too prideful to admit that there was something wicked inside me.

Confession is often made into something you do, not something that is. It is a behavior which man in the church has said is good. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus talks about confession and its goodness and tells us (1 John 1:9) that if we confess our sin’s he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right? But Jesus doesn’t want lip service, sorry for the sake of sorry. Confession, like most other things, has the unique ability to be abused and turned into a ritual that eventually loses meaning.

I have never confessed to a priest in a booth. Forgive me for saying this, but the man who would be sitting on the other side of the beautiful mahogany divider is probably just as big a sinner as I. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to tell people how messed up you are inside, in fact its quite freeing, but the priest who takes confession is just as guilty of adulterating the true meaning of confession as the religious fanatic who confesses the same sin every week in order to feel good, or less guilty.

Guilt is a bitch. It really is. It is a result of sin. I don’t God ever intended us to feel guilt, but it is a function of the world we live in, a function of the inherent wickedness and depravity that exists in our hearts, in my heart.

The most freeing moment of my life was the moment I realized that despite believing Jesus died on the cross to save me from an eternity of torment and damnation, I was no better than the person who heard that same message and chose not to believe it. God did not look at me differently or that person differently, he looked at all of us with love, pure unadulterated love. Love for the homosexual. Love for the poor. Love for the divorcee. Love for the addict.

It’s not a bad thing to acknowledge your own depravity. I guess we try and stave off anything negative about ourselves because, whether we admit it or not, we want people to perceive us as a good person just as much as we want to feel good about ourselves.

…

I struggle living in a country where more leads to more leads to more, when I know there are people living in countries living on the equivalent of what I just spent on my coffee at Starbucks.

It is hard for me to understand.

I don’t feel like God has given me an answer about why I feel the way I do, but I think realizing that I feel this way is a good thing. I am not going to say I’m sorry, because I’m not sorry. This is the context I live in; I feel God has put me and my circumstances together for a reason.

Sure, society dictates what we do by saying what we should do, but why do we give the greater society jurisdiction on our behavior? Really? Saying I’m not going to change because no one else will is apathy. Apathy is faith’s greatest enemy.

I admit that I sometimes find fulfillment in money and things instead of finding fulfillment in God. How empty will I feel then? When all I thought would fill me up is gone, yesterday’s fad, rusty and broken, laying in a pool of disgusting feces and rank blood?… I know God is working on this in me, and it is a painful process. It’s hard to tell myself no. But I know difficulty is usually indicative of something much more beautiful to come.

I confess that there is wickedness raging inside of me, that if left unchecked will consume to feel pleasure until all the receptors have been sate and there is nothing left but scorched earth.

I am choosing to own this. Choosing to trust that God that he has put me here for a reason and is allowing me to feel this way.

Ultimately, it’s up to me to change. I have to ask myself if I really want to.