Fess Up!

I always thought the Catholic ritual of confession was weird. It’s not something that I have ever encountered in my own life. My church doesn’t require people to come in and sit in a little box and talk to someone you can’t see through a screen. We don’t need someone to pronounce that our sins are forgiven, or do any sort of penance.

But as I grow older, and hopefully wiser, the idea of confession becomes more and more important. It is essential not only for drawing closer to God but for living a healthy life. The root of all change is confession.

We all know that the alcoholic or the drug addict can’t be forced to change. We can shove them into a locked room and force them to go through detox, but we can’t keep them from going back to old habits. Bad habits only change when the person stuck in them decides to make the change. And that change starts with admitting that the thing they are doing is bad, destructive to themselves and those around them. It’s in the twelve steps somewhere. Confess. Acknowledge that what you’ve done isn’t good.

You can’t kill a problem until you find it’s cause. When we fess up to our mistakes, we acknowledge the source of the problem. Only then can we start to heal.

Confessing is hard, though. It’s about honesty, and most people are pathological liars.

Take Adam and Eve after the first sin. Yeah, that fruit on that tree that we weren’t supposed to eat. Did we ever actually admit to doing it? No. Adam points to Eve and says, It’s her fault! Eve blames the snake. The snake just sits back and laughs.

Do you ever wonder if we might still be in Eden if Adam and Eve had just fessed up? What if they came running to God, got down on their knees, and said, “We did something wrong, and it’s our own fault because we should have known better. Please, we’re sorry. Can we start over?”

God wants us to fess up. He didn’t dole out punishment until after Adam and Eve refused to own their guilt. They couldn’t take credit for their own actions, so God sent them away. They had to learn the hard way, not because they sinned, but because they refused to admit it.

Confession is more than admitting something to yourself. You have to tell others. The body and soul are connected. I don’t think that secret confession, in silent prayer between you and God, is very powerful. The mouth as to be involved, and another set of physical ears.

I’m not saying you have to get on YouTube and start spilling all of your secret demons. But you need to find someone to tell. Find a confessor, someone you can trust, and tell them your struggles. The beauty of confession means that we don’t bear our burdens alone. When someone else knows what we have trouble with, what we have done and are afraid of doing again, they can help us. A confessor isn’t a punisher who carries your secret shame. A confessor is an encourager who can see our weakness and shore it up with their strength. A confessor is a friend to share the burden and make it lighter, to hold us accountable and pick us up when we fall.

We all need to confess, and we all need to learn to be confessors, to listen to others when they come to us with their troubles and worries and mistakes. If you have secret fears and sins, they become chains that drag you down and hold you back. When you tell someone, you can take the first steps towards the true freedom that Jesus wants for you.