I have a confession of my own: I heart St. Augustine.
We’re like soulmates seperated by hundreds of years, and by class, gender, education, and age. We’ve both been foolish, we’ve both been degenerate. And yet God in his infinite wisdom and grace was kind enough to show us fully what kind of jerks we really were and grow us into something better, more in keeping with who he is. And it is encouragement to me now to read the words of someone who has sought, as I myself need to continually seek, the absolute truth.
<—–see the resemblence?—–>
” Entrust to truth whatever truth has given you, and you will lose nothing. What is withered in you will flower again, and your illness will be made well, and all that was flowing and wasting from you will regain shape and substance and will form part of you again, and they will not lay you down in the place where they themselves descend, but will stand fast with you and abide with you forever before God who stands and abides forever.”
May I say it? HOT.
I told Mark a few months ago when I started it that I was reading the Confessions and he was surprised. He had heard it was kind of dirty. But while there may be sections that are candid about his carnal appetites, St. Augustine’s point is not to revel. The point is that God has redeemed him, he who was the worst of these, he who was immersed in not only the lifestyle but the mindset of the flesh. He speaks about the superiority he felt as he pursued intellectualism and the emptiness he found in simply following his own desires. The point is that God knew him even then, in the dirty places, and was pulling him ever closer to a true knowledge and understanding of him. And that is lovely.
I can relate. I’ve been distracted, distracting, unkind, cruel, insensitive, unfaithful, disingenuous, lazy, impatient, lusty, and raging. I’ve been called a prude and a tramp, and sometimes both at once, which . . . well, was actually probably closest to the truth. I’ve had a chip on my shoulder. I’ve rolled my eyes at people who weren’t as smart as I thought I was with my incredible massive brain. I’ve derided the Church and thought that Christians were boring, legalistic, and dead, at the same time I claimed to be a Christian while getting slobbering drunk and following boys home at night.
It’s difficult to share those things. It’s difficult to know what’s appropriate. Because as Christians it seems like we don’t want to hear it or maybe that we should just forget it. Because we’re the new creation now, aren’t we? And we are. We are. But those dark places in us . . . those dark places in us are forgiven and healed, and yet, is there sometimes scar tissue left?
What is the purpose in confession? Is it to show how God has moved and what he’s done? Is it to humble us, to remind ourselves that the perfection we are working towards hasn’t been attained yet? Is it to show other people who don’t have the relationship with God that we do that we weren’t really all that different, but that God granted us wisdom to recognize a need that only he could fill? Is it to pass on the wisdom that all those bruises have granted us, so that no one else need go through the gauntlet niavely?
Maybe it’s all those things. And I have to say I think I’ve learned more about myself in being introspective over the last year about my mistakes and failed efforts and all the time I spent not paying attention than I learned in the two and a half decades that came before it. I confess: He’s still working on me.
Tags: authenticity, confession, identity in God, lessons, mercy shown, St. Augustine, transparency, trust in God
Confession is to simply bring the darkness into the light. If it hides, it festers, grows and is toxic. Also, through confession comes accountability, and through accountability comes repentance and the true realization of grace. To be free.