Confessions of a . . . Christian

The story is told of nine year old Jenny who grew up in a small European village in the 1930’s. Jenny loved her home and she loved her parents. She loved her dolls and she loved her garden. She also loved her kind friend Officer Josef, the neighborhood policeman, who wore a big, brown uniform and an officer’s hat. For all Jenny knew, life was perfect.

One day though, something terrible happened. War broke out in Jenny’s country and within just a short period of time, Jenny’s country had lost the war and her small village became occupied by enemy forces. It wasn’t long after this that Jenny saw strange men walking up the gravel path to her home.

At first Jenny thought these men were her friends because they wore uniforms like Officer Josef’s, but she was wrong. As the men crashed through the front door and began to ransack her house, Jenny heard her father cry, “Run to the woods Jenny! Run to the woods!” So racing out the back door wearing only a dress and sandals, Jenny looked over her shoulder just in time to see the soldiers dragging her parents towards a big black car. Jenny’s heart was filled with terror. Sobbing she ran on.

To a stranger the woods might have seemed thick and impenetrable, but to Jenny they were like an old friend. She had spent many pleasant hours in the woods with her parents: exploring streams, climbing trees, listening for the scurry of animals in the underbrush. Jenny was so familiar with the woods that she wasn’t scared of anything, and even now in her frightened state, she quickly found one of her favorite spots to hide. There Jenny collapsed, trembling and confused. There she fell asleep.

When she awoke, Jenny was still frightened but her need for survival was strong. She knew what she had to do. “I’m alone now,” she said to herself, “Mother and father are gone. The scary men in uniforms will catch me if I go home. This must be my home now.”

Over the next few weeks, fear and loneliness became Jenny’s constant companions. She hated being alone but she was more afraid of being exposed. To combat her loneliness, Jenny would often replay her favourite memories with her mother and father and Officer Josef, but after a while she started to wonder if they’d even existed.

One day after a long walk, Jenny’s reverie was shattered by the sound of shouting in front of her. Looking up she saw three uniformed men less than 100 metres away. Having learnt her lesson well, Jenny didn’t even stop to deliberate. Dodging and weaving, Jenny ran through the woods and away from the men as fast as she could. Every so often she would stop to listen for their voices. They grew fainter and fainter.

Jenny was far too far away to hear what the men said when they stopped to rest. “Are you sure it was her?” the older man gasped. “Absolutely,” replied a second man. “But why would she run from us?” the third questioned. “A uniform’s a uniform,” said Officer Josef.  “She mustn’t know our country is safe again. She mustn’t know her parents have sent us to find her.”

Although our reason for hiding differs, Jenny’s story illustrates the state of humanity since The Fall: desperately needing to be found but more afraid of being exposed. The Bible tells us this fear was first planted in us by Adam and Eve. When Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, their sin broke what had been a perfect relationship with God and each other, and as result they became afraid, so afraid they went into hiding. We find this story in Genesis 3:1-10.

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?”’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.’”

When Adam and Eve took from the tree God had told them not to touch, their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked. When Adam and Eve took from the tree God had told them not to touch, they moved from a place of connection and security, to a place of disconnection and insecurity, and it was their insecurity that made them afraid of being exposed, that made them hide. Sin. Disconnection. Insecurity. Fear. Hiding.

I don’t know if you are relating to this story. I don’t know if you are like Adam and Eve and me, and you sometimes find yourself covering up parts of yourself that you wish weren’t there; parts that make you feel unacceptable or like you don’t belong somewhere. The truth is that we all do this to some extent; we actually all live two lives to some extent: an external life where we express the thoughts we know will be affirmed, the feelings we know others will empathise with, the behaviours that will make it look like we belong; and yet deep within us we hide those parts of us that we want to keep under wraps; unloved parts that challenge our connection with God and others.

Unfortunately this is not a long-term solution. Sure hiding makes us feel safe in the short-term, but isolating parts of ourselves only creates problems for us long-term Dr John Townsend says, (1) and physics students could tell us why. It’s called the law of entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics. A law that states that anything isolated moves toward deterioration. After a hundred years, a rubbish tip becomes a rustier rubbish tip. Vegetables left too long in the fridge start to resemble penicillin. And prisoners put into solitary confinement? They call it death by incarceration. Entropy operates in every realm, including the spiritual realm, so if we cut ourselves, or just parts of ourselves, off from God and others, these parts will never be able to heal, which means we will therefore never become whole. Without connection, attachment, belonging, the Bible tells us we will never become holy.

When a part of us exists in isolation, away from relationship, away from love, it will eventually create problems. “. . . every good tree bears good fruit,” Matthew 7:17-18 says, “but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.” When something is not okay at the core of our being, the symptoms that result are not going to be okay. Anxiety, depression, fear, guilt, shame, anger, cynicism, eating disorders, substance abuse, career conflicts, physical illness; the list goes on.

At the deepest spiritual and emotional level of every human being, every human being needs to connect, because God created us to connect. And this need to connect is so strong that if we aren’t connected to something good, we will connect ourselves to something bad. Our need to bond is so strong that we cannot not bond, so if we cannot bond with something that is loving, we will bond with something that is unloving; something Satan has created to meet our God-given legitimate needs in ways that will destroy us.

What I find most tragic about all this is that it doesn’t need to be this way. 1 John 1:9 clearly tells us that, “If we confess our sins, He who is faithful and just (meaning God) will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The death of Jesus Christ on the cross and ultimately His resurrection is what makes it possible for us to be forgiven and therefore reconnected with God. Jesus is what makes it possible for us to bring those unloved parts of us out of hiding, out of isolation, back into relationship with God, so instead of deteriorating into more problems, these unloved parts can be healed, we can become whole. This is Part A of the answer.

Part B of the answer is something we don’t often teach because we don’t usually like it and that’s our need to confess our sins to one another. “. . . confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another,” James 5:16 says. And why? “. . . so that you may be healed.” That’s right. “. . . confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” God’s plan of redemption, God’s plan for restoring those unloved parts of us not only requires us to come out of hiding with God, it also requires us to come out of hiding with others.

Now maybe I should tell you what I’m not saying here. What I’m not saying is that we need to confess our sins to one another in order to be saved. The Bible tells us it is only as we believe in the Lord Jesus that we are saved (Acts 16:31). What I am saying however is that the reason Jesus Christ died on the cross was so we could not only reconnect with God but so we could also reconnect with others (Ephesians 2:12-16, Galatians 3:26-28). In the beginning God created us to connect not only with Him but also with others which means we will never fully heal unless we bring those unloved parts of us out of hiding, out of isolation, back into relationship with both God and others. We will never become fully whole, unless we confess our sins to both God and others.

I don’t know what your picture of confession is but in his book Your God is too Safe, Mark Buchanan says that for a long time, the picture that came to his mind when he thought about confession was a picture likened unto an event which I don’t personally remember but you may. It was where the first American President George Bush was captured by the paparazzi retching on the then Japanese Prime Minister. Apparently the media caught it all: the president’s slow motion blur of humiliation. The Japanese Prime Minister’s look of anguish and revulsion. The president’s bodyguards first scrambling, then diving in. That was Buchanan’s picture of confession: spewing forth something considered disgusting, then groveling as the person receiving it pulled back in revulsion; as those appointed to protect him panicked while the paparazzi captured the moment for all to see and remember forever.

Confession, Buchanan once thought, was like wrecking a dinner party, but by the time of writing his book Buchanan’s picture of confession had changed. Something had happened in his life to enable him to say, “It (meaning confession) is, for sure, uncomfortable and awkward to begin – as most holy habits are. But running, swimming, skipping, skiing, riding a bike, climbing a mountain – all are uncomfortable and awkward to begin. We think at first we’re going to kill ourselves doing this, locking two long, thin boards onto big clunky boots and flinging ourselves headlong down a snowy, icy slope. But after a while, it’s exhilarating. It makes us feel alive . . . At first we’d rather die than open up our inner life, its secrets and doubts and hurts and fears and wrongs, to someone else. But after a while it makes us feel alive.”

It makes us feel alive? Could this really be possible? Do you think you could ever interchange the feeling you get while confessing with the feeling you get while skiing or climbing a mountain?!

The only way this will be possible as Buchanan says, is if we redefine what it means to confess. Historically the place of confession has suffered abuse in the church, which is what saw it being dropped from some churches altogether. This dropping of confession did little to further the cause however, because churches were then filled with smiling faces – smiling people who were still dying on the inside but were now too afraid to tell anyone about it. Today we might still be likened unto these churches. Instead of bearing good fruit many of us would still prefer to paint it on, hoping no-one will notice how fresh the paint is or that we don’t even have the roots or sap to grow such fruit.

Non-Christian culture hasn’t done a lot to enhance our picture of confession either. In fact, non-Christian culture has had a glut of confession. Television and radio hosts have become international celebrities by prising complete strangers into disclosing the most intimate and oftentimes sordid details of their private thoughts and lives. This kind of confession had only increased our burden. We know the shame others experience when they confess. That would be the shame we would experience if we confessed. This is why we need to redefine confession.

Buchanan doesn’t have a definition of confession that’s based on the Greek or Hebrew. All he has is his own homegrown version that says confession is simply presenting our real self before God and others. It is losing the mask-wearing, the side-stepping, the pretense and preening. It is knowing that Jesus loves us no matter what and therefore bringing before Him and others not the person we wish we were but the person we are.

I think the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:10-13 illustrates this beautifully.

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

And Jesus went on to say that this man, the tax collector,

“. . . went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (verse 14)

All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted. What this verse tells us is that there are negative consequences for hiding our sin and there are positive consequences for acknowledging it. Although Jesus is talking specifically about acknowledging our sin before God in this context, the same principle applies when we acknowledge our sins before others. When we confess our sins before God, something amazing happens. When we confess our sins before others, something amazing happens. And the something amazing that happens when we confess our sins before both God and others, is we experience the joy of our salvation. Although we cannot be saved by confessing our sins to others as I explained earlier, Christ’s death on the cross makes it possible for us to reconnect with both God and others, and it is this experience of reconnection that could be described as exhilarating.

I know that feeling. I know both the fear that results in hiding and the joy of sharing my true self with God and others. How amazing it is to come clean on something we thought would take us down. How freeing it is to come out of hiding, and share a secret or doubt or hurt or fear or wrong, and suffer no shame.

This is what we miss out on when we choose not to confess to God and others, when we choose to hide; true fellowship. 1 John 1:6-7 tells us that there is an intimate link between confession and true fellowship. True fellowship does not happen among perfect people and their God, true fellowship happens among honest people and their God. Unless we are willing to admit our imperfections, Christian fellowship, like any fellowship, is simply a masquerade, a game of hide-and-seek, of jargon. It has no real life and no real depth. It leaves us feeling insecure and afraid. It knows nothing of exhilaration.

I don’t know where all this leaves you. I don’t know to what extent you have been hiding or to what extent you are experiencing the symptoms of hiding, but if you want to be free, if you want experience the joy of your salvation, I want to encourage you to come clean with both God and others and to help you confess to others safely I want to share some of Buchanan’s tips on who to confess to and how to confess:

The first person I would recommend you confess to is someone who has not been affected by your sin because you may need that someone to support you through the next step. This person needs to be wise, someone mature in their faith, someone truly pursuing God. They need to be aware of their own vulnerability; able to be honest about their own weakness; not shocked by sin, but still grieved by it.

The kind of person you are looking for is someone who can weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. They need to be trustworthy, not given to gossip. And above all and in all, they need to love. They must be able to know the worst about you and simply use that knowledge to pray for you and help you, not hurt you.

If you can’t find such a person, I’d go so far as to suggest you hold off on confessing until you do. To confess to another is to entrust the deepest part of ourselves and we should never do that lightly. Confession is intimacy. It is nakedness. It is exposing our inner selves and for this reason I’d also recommend men confess to men, and women to women – unless of course you’re confessing to your partner or spouse.

The next person I’d recommend you confess to is any person or persons your wrong doing has harmed. If your sin has harmed your family, you should confess to your family. If it has harmed your workmates, you should confess to your workmates. If it has harmed your church, you should confess to your church. But don’t confess a sin that’s only hurt two people in your church to the whole church. And don’t confess to only two people a sin that has hurt the whole church. As a rule of thumb, your confession should reflect the people you have hurt.

And how do we do that? How do we confess?

Be aware of the too little or too much syndrome. Confession should neither be too vague nor too graphic; neither, “Forgive me, I have done something bad,” nor a minute and detailed inventory of every last thought and deed. When we say too little our confession is generic and generic confession usually only produces generic forgiveness. When we say too much, we entertain other dangers like imprinting things on our hearts and minds that might plant seeds for further sin or even boasting. Our goal is to make the covering over of our sins specific so we need to think and speak specific: I have lied to so-and-so about such and such. I have done this to this person.

Be wary of mistaking confession for repentance. Confession is only the beginning. It is lifeless unless it is followed by repentance. Proverbs 28:13 says it is those who confess and renounce their sins find mercy. Confession is just clearing the ground before the building goes up. It is stripping back the weight before we run. Cleaning out the sludge and leaves so the rainwater can wash the eaves clean. Confession has no value unless we also build, run, wash.

Beware of the trap of regretting confession. It is very easy to regret confession. And that’s why we have to remind ourselves that the reason we chose to confess is because Jesus already, always, in all ways loves us. Confession is not a desperate bid to get Jesus to love us. We are able to confess because He already does and it’s for this reason that we can approach His throne of grace with confidence and no matter the reaction of others, we can leave free, feeling exhilarated!  

There it was again: “Jenny! Jenny! Where are you?” When Jenny heard the man’s voice she scurried up her safest spying tree and peering out from her well concealed post she saw that one of the soldiers had returned. There he was, still wearing the same uniform. But there was something different about this soldier today. He didn’t seem to be in such a hurry. And his voice seemed almost appealing. “Jenny! Jenny!” the man called every few metres. And then Jenny saw him sit down beside a big maple tree.

After much deliberation Jenny decided she’d take a risk. She decided she’d cough in the soldier’s direction. Very slowly the man looked up at Jenny and for the first time she caught a glimpse of his face. His face seemed vaguely familiar; almost friendly. Without moving the man smiled and for some reason memories of Officer Josef came flooding back.

“Jenny,” the man said. “It’s me, Josef. I’ve come to take you home.” “I don’t have a home,” Jenny replied. “Didn’t you know that mother and father have been taken away? I live here now. I live in a cave. This is my home.” “It’s true,” Josef went on, “your mother and father were taken away. Soldiers did come from another land. But they have gone now. Our country is safe again. And so are your parents. They miss you Jenny. They sent me to find you.”

Hearing this news created mixed emotions for Jenny. Conflicting feelings surged right through her. On the one hand she longed to back in her parents arms again but the fear of leaving the woods still gripped her. The dark places had become her home. These woods were what had kept her safe and comforted her during her intense loneliness and moments of sadness and terror. Should I go, or should I stay? Will I take a risk, or do I want to be alone forever?

Jenny gazed at Officer Josef’s uniform; then she looked at his kind face. Back to his uniform; again to his face. She agonized. His face, she told herself. I think I remember his face. Taking a deep breath Jenny started slowly down the tree and when she finally got to the bottom, Officer Josef was there to take her hand. Together they walked out of the woods, towards home.

Endnotes

(1) Jenny’s story is adapated from Dr John Townsend’s book, Hiding from Love (Zondervan, 1996) as are a number of the concepts in this sermon. 

(2) A number of the concepts and illustrations in this sermon are also from Mark Buchanan’s book, Your God is Too Safe (Multnomah, 2001).