This past Sunday, I heard something interesting about how
confession isn’t about bullet listing your sins so that you can be absolved for
every micro-mini transgression for the last week/month/year/decade. The purpose of confession is to recognize the
journey that we are on towards being a better person (Yep. I said journey again. See my previous post about
journey's. It's good. Really.)
Confession today is about the big ideas not just the small ones. What a difference that it is now from what it
was 20 or 30 years ago.
Image from catholictv.com
Looking at confession a bit closer I’ve come to realize that
this could be incorrect and it may be that it really hasn’t changed all that
much. To be honest, when someone is
confessing their bulleted list of sins they are really using small pieces to
tell about the larger picture. Swearing
at your sister, stealing pens or paperclips from work, yelling at a waitress,
ignoring a bum on the street, bullying, etc. are all part of a larger picture
that includes sins like Impatience, Greed, Anger, Indifference, Apathy, Hate,
Self-Centeredness, and Aggression.
The world has changed greatly in the 21st Century
and sadly it doesn’t include flying cars and “Rosie the Robot” to clean my
house. It does however include news ways
of thinking when it comes to right or wrong, or good or bad. You may have noticed that I listed a few
concepts above rather than specifics like maybe the 10 Commandments? While that is an important list that we
should follow, it isn’t necessarily direction for our daily lives. Don’t get me wrong these 10 are good ones,
however after learning not to steal, kill, swear, and lie, what else do we
need? It turns out there is plenty we
still need.
The problem is that we have lost direction. Yep.
Got the not killing. That’s a
good one. Not stealing. Good there, too. (Do pens from work
count? They do? Darn.)
I don’t covet my neighbor’s wife (have you seen her? Ug! I
covet a paper bag to put on her head.
Wait! I probably shouldn’t have
said that.) Keeping Holy the Sabbath
(Man I saw them in concert in 79…it was a blast! Whoops.
Nevermind).
Yes, we have lost direction.
We have learned from American culture how to distract, deflect, and
direct so that we can avoid accounting for our realness…Our True Selves. The one we show to God. The self that He sees even when we try to
distract, deflect, and direct. The issue
here isn’t the stealing of pens from work but the bigger idea of integrity. Or
the issue of not coveting my neighbors wife but of bullying a creation of God
who loves her completely (He did create her in his image and mocking her
directly mocks the Creator.)
So what do we confess during this Lenten season? Surely not the recent influx of pens, or
homely neighbors, but the bigger ideas of: Loneliness, Anger, Bitterness,
Indifference, Impatience, Greed, or Hate.
Just to name a few. Do you need
to give your confessor examples?
Nope. Acknowledge that you did
something unworthy of a child of God and ask for a way to keep from doing it
again. Confession is meant to help us
grow not make us feel worse. Ask your
confessor to help you to find a new way of behaving or thinking so that you can
begin to move away from your current sinful self and towards a new beginning.
You and your soul will be glad you did.
Life is good.
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