This morning, on KKLA at 8:30 am the opening comments were directed towards making changes in your life, and that God is the mechanism through which these changes and transitions occur.
Since I have started believing more than 6 months ago, most weeks do not go by without one realization or another whether its about the Bible or where my life does not match up with the godliness God inspires and impresses upon me. There is little else than I would love to be than that elusively godly wife someday. (I need to date and get a boyfriend first, of course!) But I don't think I had put so much faith in informal social control/public confession before. I think there is a drawback to the Catholic confession, in which its just the individual and the priest, for as the nondenominationals and Evangelicals teach, you are to go to eachother and confess. The social sanctions are more than enough to shame us into changing our sinful and godless ways. I don't that same shameful feeling when I go to a priest because it's not nearly half as public.
When we come face to face with public shame we are more apt to change our ways. It's likened to the difference between the laughing stocks in the town square and telling someone in private who is sworn to keeping his mouth shut. When you are aware of the fact that someone will not go about prattling your sins you can feel safe that you can go about your business with out shame or guilt. I say, hand over to me the shame and guilt, the more the better, and therefore the more likely I am to change my ways. In a public affirmation of our sins, there are more people we are held accountable too. You don't need to take a social psychology course to understand this, the writers of the Bible didn't have college courses available to themselves, but they got it correct: public statements are more likely to bring you to shame which pushes you to change your ways more than any tiny confessional can bring me to my knees and to change.
2 comments:
I'm thinking about this one.
One thing that has prevented me from going to confession has been shame. In my twenties I rarely went to confession, if at all. I sinned too much; I felt too guilty; I felt incapable of repentance; I was driven by hormones and immaturity. Self-control didn’t work. I had no almost control over my sinful behavior. In my thirties, I went to confession sporadically, probably averaging once a year. In my forties I started to go more often. Now at age 50, I am trying to go once per month. One thing that held me back was felling mountains of shame for my sins.
I committed sins that the church, objectively considers mortal sins. That’s pretty tough to deal with. It feels even worse when the priest points out that I received communion while in a state of mortal sin—another mortal sin.
I’m pretty morally scrupulous, and I can condemn myself pretty good! And feel pretty low-down and rotten as a result. Pretty emotionally self-destructive I’d say. I’m still trying to deal with it.
I think some misunderstandings held me back. I think that when we were children, we were taught that when we confess a sin, we are supposed to have resolved to never do it again. I felt that in good conscience, I wasn’t able to say that I wouldn’t commit certain sins again. I felt damned. But when I was around 30, a priest that I was friends with told me that even if we know we are going to commit the sin again, we should still confess it. That helped. (and that article I sent you says the same thing basically—that Confession is a cry (of brokenness) to God that we can’t do it without his help). When I was an adult, in my twenties, I went to confession where I felt the priest was condemning me for a particular sin I committed. I felt like I was before the inquisition and they wanted to make sure I repented of this one sin (I should have said, “Why do you think I came here for?”). That turned me off. I didn’t get an attitude of forgiveness. At my current parish, I go to an Indian priest who truly has a Christ-like attitude of forgiveness. He always tells me that Jesus has ALREADY forgiven my sins. I feel a great weight lifted from my shoulders when he says that.
Confession is still tough though.
I have a lot more to say but later.
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