Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Not An Oxymoron
Paul Tripp writes of "The Grace of Confession" and I automatically wondered how many people would think such a thing really was oxymoronic. How could the pain of facing our own shortcomings possibly be gracefuly? Says Tripp:
This is not news - this is 12 step stuff.
But what's more, this draws a clear line between cheap and real grace.
It's easy to say I love you - it's hard to change you life for them.
If you are a doctor, would you rather help someone cope with their symptoms or cure them of their illness? The church seems to have settled for the former when we are the only place where the later is possible.
I often wonder how many people are stuck in their relationships in a cycle of repeating the same things over and over again. They repeat the same misunderstandings. They rehearse and re-rehearse the same arguments. They repeat the same wrongs. Again and again things are not resolved. Night after night they end the day with nothing reconciled; they awake with memories of another bad moment with a friend, spouse, neighbor, co-worker or family member and they march toward the next time when the cycle will be repeated.He has hit on the real key here. Confession is the beginning of transformation. Is it any wonder then that we talk of it so little these days. People want to come to church; people want to "worship" (they want to sing cool songs and have fun anyway); but the last thing they want to do is change. Change, after all is hard.
[...]
Here is the point: no change takes place in a relationship that does not begin with confession. The problem for many of us is we look at confession as a burden, when it is actually a grace.
This is not news - this is 12 step stuff.
But what's more, this draws a clear line between cheap and real grace.
It's easy to say I love you - it's hard to change you life for them.
If you are a doctor, would you rather help someone cope with their symptoms or cure them of their illness? The church seems to have settled for the former when we are the only place where the later is possible.
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