Confession Is Good For the Soul
September 28, 2021
“‘Confession is good for the soul,’ they said. ‘It will be good for you,’ they said. Well, I don’t feel any better, and I have to wonder if they ever read about Achan in the Old Testament. He confessed and he was stoned for his offense. Just like him, I feel judged more now than ever. What is the point of going to church anyway?”
I wonder if you have ever felt, in some part, the same way this person felt? You had offered to open up to someone else, probably within the church, and in the process, instead of feeling the enormous weight of the sin being lifted from off of your shoulders, you immediately felt greater condemnation from the person with whom you were speaking? If that is the case, I am sorry for your experience, and I hope that you will not let this singular event discourage you from following God’s commands – to confess. Does this mean that we should, like Catholic parishioners, go to a confessional booth and confess to a priest? Not at all. Likewise, it does not mean that you should go about airing all of your “dirty laundry” to anyone and everyone.
Instead, James offers that we should confess our sins one to another and we shall be healed, which I believe to be both a physical and spiritual healing. Satan wants us to hold in confession. If we do not speak of the failures of our lives multiple things take place: others do not learn from our mistakes, we remain in a state of guilt (in other words, we feel guilty for that which we have done), and we will live defeated – fearing to bring someone else into the light, because we do not want to be exposed as a “fraud.”
Then there is the other side of the coin as well. Have you ever had someone else confess something to you that you knew what they did to be wrong? In the process, did you offer judgment or mercy in response? If we have received the mercy and grace of God, because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf, surely we can extend the same to someone else who has not wronged us near as badly as we have wronged God. Remember, we need other people in our lives who will both hold our feet to the flames to follow Jesus, regardless of what feels best, while also extending mercy, because they too have been offered the same pardon by Jesus. Are you accountable to anyone else? If not, and you think you do not need one, are you looking in a mirror and seeing a perfect person reflecting back at you? If so, it is a carnival mirror… the image is distorted… you are not perfect… you need help in this life.
