Friday, November 02, 2007
Is This Sacramental?
The London Telegraph reports on a new Protestant trend.
Being a good reformed Protestant, I am willing to say that confession never was about penance and the priestly role of Roman Catholic confession is troublesome, but confession, the laying of oneself, naked as it were, before the Lord for His work to be done upon you is something that is holy.
This strikes me as just profane. There is little the church needs more than a return to a genuine understanding of confession and its role in our lives both individually and corporately, but this is not it. This is an admixture of pop psychology, television garbage, with a light sprinkling of theological goobeldy-gook.
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Americans are flocking to confess their sins as Protestant churches have joined their Catholic counterparts in modernising the sacrament of penance.But what they are talking about is something that just makes my skin crawl:
New technology is fuelling the boom, but so is clever marketing by Churches that are portraying confession as a form of self-improvement — always popular with Americans — rather than some sort of punishment.It's not that I am opposed to the use of technology, it's that confession is most certainly not about SELF-improvement. That may be a side effect, but that is not what it is about.
Church leaders also attribute the boom to the fashion for self-analysis peddled by daytime television programmes such as The Jerry Springer Show and to a wider theological trend in which Christians are looking for firmer moral guidance.
Being a good reformed Protestant, I am willing to say that confession never was about penance and the priestly role of Roman Catholic confession is troublesome, but confession, the laying of oneself, naked as it were, before the Lord for His work to be done upon you is something that is holy.
This strikes me as just profane. There is little the church needs more than a return to a genuine understanding of confession and its role in our lives both individually and corporately, but this is not it. This is an admixture of pop psychology, television garbage, with a light sprinkling of theological goobeldy-gook.
Just some things to think about when it comes to confession:
- Confession is about self-denial, not self-improvement or agrandizement, in fact it is really not about self AT ALL
- There is not a priestly role in confession, but there is an accoutability role. To confess into the Internet is like screaming at the walls.
- We are communal creatures made for each other as we are for the Lord. Confession without relationship is somehow empty.
- Confession does not build us up, it breaks us down. Only God can build us up
Lord, save us from ourselves!
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