To confess your sins to God is not to tell [God] anything [God] doesn't already know. Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the bridge. Frederick Buechner
Since I couldn't sleep tonight, I thought I'd get up and do some writing. I thought at first I would write about some of the books I've been reading, but a thought was gnawing at the back of my brain. It seems that in nearly all the books I've been perusing of late, a common thread weaves through all: Confession.
Now I readily admit it's something I don't give thought to on a day-to-day basis. C.S. Lewis calls confession the threshold in our prayers. When I was first starting in my walk of faith, I learned a little acronym for "how to pray." ACTS - Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. I have tried that, and it's handy and effective enough if a mnemonic device helps you connect with your Creator. When I tried it, I understood that the C meant that I needed to tell God what I was sorry for. But being mostly left-brained, I also reasoned since God is omniscient, He already knew what I needed to be sorry for...alas, I typically kind of gave that part of the acronym a token attempt. So with that limited experience and pig-headed logic, confession is actually something more or less of foreign to me.
I think there are a number of reasons for that.
- I grew up Protestant, not Catholic, so I never experienced what Catholics call the Sacrament of Penance. In the churches I've attended, there has oftentimes been a corporate confession, and certainly a Confession of Faith; by and large, though, Protestants don't believe an intermediary is necessary for confession and absolution.
- My family didn't talk about personal matters between each other, let alone share our deepest secrets, sins and shame with an outsider.
- As an American...perhaps just as a human, humbling myself and giving voice to my wrongdoing just doesn't come naturally.
Yet I'm starting to wonder if maybe I've missed the boat.
In her book, Girl Meets God, Lauren Winner traces her steps from being born to a Jewish father and Southern Baptist mother, having to convert to Judaism in order to actually be considered Jewish, and then being wooed by Jesus and converting to Christianity. Winner details her experience as a Christian in the Episcopal church and as such, talks about the rite of confession, The Reconciliation of the Penitent. We've all seen at least the beginning of this portrayed in films - "Bless me Father for I have sinned." On first blush, this might seem a little too Catholic for many sensibilities, but in the Protestant rite, it ends with the confessor also offering a type confession: "Go in peace, and pray for me a sinner."
Winner recounts that she doesn't entirely understand how confession - in the sense of confessing sins to another person - works. The priest who acts as her confessor shares that he doesn't understand it much better, but perhaps there is something psychologically liberating in confessing via a semi-public rite. Winner ties this in to her Jewish roots, explaining that on the holiday of Yom Kippur, "Jews confess their sins, both privately and corporately. Before the holiday begins, they go around asking the forgiveness of everyone they have wronged; the Talmud teaches that God forgives the sins we've done against Him freely, but He will not forgive the sins we've done against our neighbors until they have forgiven us first. One Jewish prayer book puts it this way: God's forgiveness for us is our forgiveness of other people running through us."
While reading this book, I've also been reading another, written by the senior pastor of the church we're now attending. From what I can glean, Brian Tome is not one to stand on ceremony, and is decidedly not an Episcopalian priest or likely a Talmudic scholar. In his Free Book, Tome describes that years after confessing certain sins to God, it was brought to mind during prayer that he needed to confess in a different way. So he wrote letters and made restitution to people he had wronged. And while not explicitly advocating the formal rite of confession, he does say this: "Freedom isn't cheap. Talk is cheap. If you want forgiveness and its ensuing freedom, you need to show it. This means that as much as you are able, you need to try to right the wrong. If you stole money, it should be returned with the interest it could have earned. If you've slandered a person's reputation, don't just ask forgiveness. Call every person involved and tell the truth - maybe take out a full-page ad in the local newspaper."
My take-away from both of these authors: Confession is not just a going through the motions lip-service, and it's not simply a tidy step in our prayers. What confession is... is necessary.
Confession is necessary because it's biblical.
"Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." James 5:16 ESV.
Confession is necessary for restoration and reconciliation.
Although God absolutely is the One who absolves (Isaiah 43:25, Psalm 103:12), confession is necessary because something has gone wrong in the world, in our hearts and in our relationships.
Though nothing is said in James about offering absolution to one another, it clearly instructs confession on a lateral plane, not only to God. Perhaps a reason for that is the clearing of the conscience, a psychological impulse as suggested by Winner's priest. And of course as suggested by Matthew Henry in his commentary, it will lead to greater harmony: "To acknowledge our faults to each other, will tend greatly to peace and brotherly love."
But looking a little further in James, maybe there is another reason confession is necessary.
"My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins." v. 19-20 ESV
How can we know if someone "wanders from the truth" unless we have relationships that are authentic, transparent, and include confession?
Lauren Winner notes that confession makes sense because it is incarnational. "Here, in confession, God is connecting us to Himself not through bread or oil or water or wine, but through another broken body, one who absolves you, and then says, 'Go in peace, and pray for me, a sinner.'"
Perhaps just as confession spans the abyss between us and God, it also can be the bridge between brothers.
