I recently had a conversation with someone that grew up in the Catholic church who now attends Willowdale Chapel. He wanted to know how our church does confessions.
“Well…it’s a little different here.” I explained that even though we don’t have a set time and place for confession the way the Catholic church does, we’re encouraged to confess our sins directly to God as well as to close friends. It’s a more “organic” process.
While he liked the idea of confessing to friends better than confessing to a priest, he shared how having a regular practice of confession was one of his favorite things about Catholicism.
I heard a similar sentiment expressed during a recent women’s teaching on confession. The speaker was also raised in the Catholic church, and she described looking forward to the times when the confessional was open because she knew she would come out “feeling light and back on good terms with God.”
Both these conversations have me thinking about the importance of confession within Christian community. Unfortunately this spiritual discipline is sometimes glossed over within the Protestant church. Those of us who were raised in legalism often try to avoid that end of the spectrum as much as possible, and confession can feel like a legalistic practice.
But how can we reconcile this with Jesus’ words in James 5:16, where He explicitly commands us to confess our sins to each other? This isn’t a verse whose interpretation you can argue away. The point He’s making couldn’t be much clearer: confessing our sins is an act of obedience.
Notice the second part of that verse: “...confess your sins and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”
Confession isn’t just something we do to check off a box on our religious to-do list. It’s an act of vulnerability that’s meant to bring about healing. Jesus tells us to participate in confession because it requires letting other people know us, and letting other people know us leads to impossible change. It begins the process of scraping shame’s stain from our souls.
Confession plays a huge role in my own story of healing from a life-long struggle with sin and shame. For so many years I fought to conquer my sin on my own. I would give into the temptation, confess it to God and promise my repentance, and then fall back into it a few months or weeks (or days, or hours) later.
With the exception of doing it in my head during my church’s monthly communion time, I wasn’t in the rhythm of confessing my sins. I shared them with God when I felt particularly convicted, but the thought of telling another human what I struggled with — someone who could actually look into my eyes as I spoke the words aloud — was unthinkable.
And then something happened that made the unthinkable a reality. Keeping my secret wasn’t an option anymore.
So late one rainy night, I drove to a close friend’s house, sat on her couch, and confessed my sins to her. It was as terrifying as it sounds. I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest and into the cold mug of tea I was gripping for dear life.
But at one point during our conversation, when I found myself lost for words, my friend put her hand on my knee and said something to me that changed everything.
“Hey, I know this is really hard for you, and I just want to make sure you know that you don’t have to be afraid to tell me anything. You are safe.”
My eyes started to leak and my heart let out a breath. These were the words I’d been waiting to hear since I was a little girl.
Having someone I loved look me in the eye and promise they weren’t going to run away now that they knew the deepest, darkest part of me was a kind of freedom I didn’t know was possible.
Curt Thompson, a Christian psychiatrist, speaker, and author, sums this concept up beautifully in his book The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves.
“...Shame’s healing encompasses the counterintuitive act of turning toward what we are most terrified of...But it is in the movement toward another, toward connection with someone who is safe, that we come to know life and freedom from this prison.”
Confessing the broken parts of our stories brings life and freedom from the prison of our shame. We can’t conquer sin and shame without our community, and we can’t experience community without letting ourselves be known. Deeply, truly, fully known.
And it’s only when we are fully known that we know what it is to be fully loved.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
ABOUT OUR BLOGGER
Kati Lynn Davis grew up in Chester County. After a brief stay on the other side of Pennsylvania to earn a writing degree from the University of Pittsburgh, she returned to the area and got a job working for a local library. When she isn’t writing, Kati enjoys reading, drawing, watching movies (especially animated ones!), drinking bubble tea, hanging out with her family cat, and going for very slow runs. Kati is pretty sure she’s an Enneagram 4 but is constantly having an identity crisis over it, so thankfully she’s learning to root her sense of self in Jesus.