Confession Time

What if confession is not about shame, but telling the truth in the presence of love?

I confess that I’ve rarely confessed.

Formally, anyway.

I’ve never set foot in one of those Catholic confession booths. They do seem mysterious and beautiful… but I’ve never formally offered my confession.

The very idea of it, in principle, never used to sit well with me. At least as I used to understand it…

I don’t personally relate to an authoritarian God to whom I must apologize for not following rules.

And since that’s how I always vaguely thought about confession, it always just seemed like it was for other people.

But my feeling has evolved a little. Let me explain.

The other day I was having a really wonderful conversation at a coffee shop with a friend. He and I are both dads of teenagers. And while there might have been some light jokes and eye rolls about the expected, typical challenges of parenting teens… there was something else too.

We found ourselves vulnerably admitting how we wish we were better at being dads.

Not that we were failures.

Not that we were terrible.

Not that we were problematic.

Just that we were imperfect parents.

That we get frustrated too easily.

That we get distracted too much.

That we don’t listen well enough.

That we put work before family sometimes.

That all these years had already gone by with our kids and we were afraid we’d missed our chance to be the dads we imagined ourselves to be.

We were… confessing.

To each other. As friends.

And it was so human. So normal. So good.

Confession feels different to me when I understand it as… a space that is sacred enough and safe enough… to grow.

Confession transforms for me when I see it not as groveling before an angry God… but telling the truth in the presence of love.

I misunderstood the confession booth for decades. I thought it was a dark cage in which I should punish myself before a disappointed God. Now I’m wondering if it was always just a safe sanctuary in which I could feel heard by a fellow human.

At my home church, at the early morning service that is full of mostly gray-haired wise folks, we do a rather traditional liturgical moment moment where we offer a communal confession and receive a communal prayer of assurance. I’ve grown to love this little moment in the church experience.

It feels safe.

It feels human.

It doesn’t feel like I’m in trouble or should feel guilty.

It feels like a space where I can share how I’m trying hard… and even if I’m not doing perfect, I’ll receive a loving, assuring divine embrace anyway.

I wonder if we all understood our daily moments of sacred human connection at coffee shops, at work, around our dinner tables, over texts with friends, or with strangers as we wait for a train or bus… as potential moments of confession… I wonder if we’d try to make people feel more safe.

James 5:16 reads… “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed…”

I love how James teaches us that confession is horizontal. Not just vertical. Confess to each other. Heal each other.

Confession is relational. It isn’t about guilt or shame or power or groveling. It is about our capacity for holding one another upright when we feel like falling.

Safely holding one another upright.

May we hear and offer confession.

Amen.