Sometimes confession is not enough
By Bishop Woodie W. White
There are times when confession is not enough! It is a reality to ponder in this Lenten season. This time of journeying with one's missteps in acknowledgment and confession can be spirit-wrenching. Yet it is an opportunity for spirit cleansing as well as righting relationships with others. And God.
However, confession is not really calendar-limited. While these 40 days are a time of corporate remembering, confession is utterly personal. It is a part of the regular rhythm of living. Mistakes, poor decisions and sometimes acts of painful consequence follow us. The need to acknowledge and confess is a human exercise. Seeking forgiveness is a life long place. Remorse must find expression.
Yet it could be all too easy. Confession and remorse could simply be a therapeutic response. A way to ease one's conscience. It appears there's no end to God's love or patience. Thus Scripture reminds us that forgiveness can be offered as many times as sought, seven times seventy if necessary.
But there is more to this cycle than confession. There is remorse, repentance and penance. Confession is not enough. Genuine sorrow for one's actions is prerequisite. The word spoken, the deed that brought pain and a broken relationship. The sorrow caused God. While the confession is welcomed, and the cleansing words of a gracious God, "Your sins are forgiven," are healing, there are other words: "Go and sin no more."
Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner is a helpful and instructive book, that I turn to again and again. It addresses the need of Christian leaders, and especially pastors, to be fed spiritually along with the members of the flock. Indeed, she graphically acknowledges that pastors too have wounds, hurts and burdens. Spiritual manna is required by the shepherd as well as the sheep. The author identifies what can happen to the underfed shepherd. She offers helpful ways the shepherd can be fed spiritually along with the sheep. There is a chapter that speaks to brokenness, confession and remorse. But Ms. Wuellner points out that there are times when confession and remorse are not enough.
There can be a pattern of wrongdoing. The same misdeeds are repeated, each time followed by some remorse and confession. No changed behavior. One continues the harsh words, broken promises, acts of destruction. In some respects, Ms. Wuellner says, "the repetitive confessions are almost a sure sign that we are dealing with woundedness, which needs healing as well as sin, which needs forgiveness."
During this Lenten season, you may need to venture even more deeply into the spirit. There may be a place where you would rather not venture, but until you do, healing and wholeness may continue to avoid you. In the words of Flora Slosson Wuellner: "Confession alone will neither clarify nor heal such a wounded pattern. Only with a discerning, loving entrance into our secret self and a conciliation with the person we really are can we begin to understand and remove this burden."
While confession is a beginning, sometimes, confession is not enough!
Copyright 2005 United Methodist Reporter. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Retired United Methodist Bishop Woodie W. White currently serves as bishop-in-resident at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Ga.