WB Confessional
When Charles Wesley first went away to college, he left behind a lot of the strict religious routine of his childhood and found great delight and success in cards, theater, music and dancing. His family became very concerned about his being “lost in diversions,” and sent older brother John to come check in on this benignly rebellious Charles. When John challenged Charles on his religious discipline, Charles replied, (and I just love this), “What! Would you have me be a saint all at once?” But it was this year of “diversions” that awakened Charles to a profound need to return to a disciplined life, a desire that would lead to the beginning of the Holy Club, the Oxford Methodists.
I’ve lately been reflecting on what confession of sins looks like for a person who is genuinely pursuing and growing in holiness. What are you meant to confess if you’re not choosing to participate in any blatant rebellion against the Lord? For this week’s comic, I thought I’d poke fun at this evangelical idea that all sin is equally an abomination before God, that something as benign as finding another person attractive is as deadly a sin deserving of hell as committing a holocaust.
I remember the messages I got in high school and college evangelical ministries was that any sexual desire I had was equivalent to lust and made me unholy and unforgivable as long as I kept repeating this sin over and over. What was actually a gift of human nature was demonized and led to great shame. In college, I remember reading this book by John Piper called “Don’t Waste Your Life,” and it made me feel sinful for doing anything with my life that wasn’t directly evangelizing others to know and love God. He started out with the story of a retired couple who spent their retirement years collecting shells on the beach. Instead of celebrating their sabbath and their enjoyment of God’s creation, Piper criticized them for wasting their last years, and therefore disappointing God. This book was really praised in my Christian college, and I began to really worry that diversions and entertainment and sabbath and rest were just me wasting my life instead of glorifying God.
I find it fascinating what sins the evangelical church tends to emphasize and utterly villify, and what sins they completely ignore. It seems like people in the church are much more quick to judge the sins of others that they don’t personally struggle with, and minimize or turn a blind eye to their real participation, especially, in social sins. It is baffling to me that so many people who believe in the same brown-skinned, marginalized Savior that I worship hold such different conclusions about the implications of our faith. In a recent poll around religion and Qanon conspiracy theories, approximately one in four evangelical Americans believe “a storm is coming” and “true American patriots may have to resort to violence.” 61% of white evangelical Protestants believe that the election was stolen from Trump. Lately, much of the evangelical church has been up in arms about Critical Race Theory, arguing that anti-racist teaching is actually more harmful than racism, and is somehow contrary to the gospel. (Maybe another day we can get into the problems around this whole argument).
Thankfully, there are still plenty within the evangelical church who are concerned about the growing radicalization of White Christian nationalism. After the January 6 mob attack on the Capitol, a group of 100 evangelical leaders wrote an open letter stating:
“We recognize that evangelicalism, and white evangelicalism in particular, has been susceptible to the heresy of Christian nationalism because of a long history of faith leaders accommodating white supremacy. We choose to speak out now because we do not want to be quiet accomplices in this on-going sin.”
(Read the whole letter here, it’s very well done and gives me a lot of hope for the church!)
In a stand-up comedy routine called “Recovering Fundamentalist,” evangelical celebrity Mark Lowry challenged the rhetoric of “love the sinner, hate the sin.” He said he’d been paying a lot more attention to the “red letters,” meaning the words spoken by Jesus, and he discovered a more appropriate position for Christians to hold is “Love the sinner, hate MY OWN sin.”
I belong to the United Methodist tradition, and we pretty regularly recite a written confession before we take Holy Communion. As I was reflecting on what it looks like to confess sin when we’re on the path to holiness, I am shaped by this written prayer of confession, which lifts up not only the things I’ve done, but also the things I’ve left undone. It acknowledges that on the road to Christian perfection, I still have plenty in my own life to notice and acknowledge, and often it’s the ways I’ve been caught up in societal norms that cause harm to my neighbor. It’s a communal confessional, where we share together in realizing the ways we have failed as a group to love God and neighbor fully.
And we have failed. The church has failed. Miserably. Time and again. Thank God that the Holy Spirit calls us to repentance, and that the mercy of Christ is offered to us over and over again. Thanks be to God that we are daily given grace to grow in holiness, to love God and neighbor better tomorrow than we did today.