TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT ME

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Yesterday, I wrote wrote about two of the five kinds of verbal prayer:  adoration and thanksgiving.  Let's think about confession.

We must tell the truth about ourselves.  That is confession.  We must be honest to God about ourselves.  That is confession.  

The problem today is that too many people think they are just fine, but no one is just fine, especially Christians.

I am often amazed at what a tiny tyrant is the god of Jesus when I hear it described in the mouths of loud preachers.  They imagine their divine dictator to be the source of all that is.  How can that be when that tiny tyrant is merely an imagined replica of themselves?  Why can’t people see that and confess it?

Many of us love to prattle about how much we love liberty, equality, and righteousness, but what we really love is superiority.  It is quite natural for each of us to believe that we are better than other people for whatever reason we can make up just to stoke our hubris. 

I drive a better car.  I go to a better, bigger church.  I cheer for the world champions.  I read the best books.  I am the strongest, the prettiest, the fastest, the smartest, the best, by god, the best.  I watch the best movies and television shows.  I live in the greatest country.  I hale from silver spoons.  I digest gold so my shit gleams.

Even the so called simple man, the ordinary Joe, sets himself up as superior because he knows nothing and hates everything complex.  Ironically, he cloaks his pride in humility, praising himself for not being all that special while at the same time glorying over his loyalty to his tribe.

Often, he is boorish, prejudiced, and ignorant.  He has managed to go through most of his life without ever reading a good book.  His conversation about sports and tools sparkles.  He rivets us for those few minutes it took for him to explain his tiny world view.  He demonstrates for us how he and his tribe are the salt of the earth. 

A truth about salt is that salt is unconscious.  It would never know when its flavor has departed.

There I go, setting myself up as superior.  It is an obnoxious human iniquity. 

The truth is the following:  not one of us is righteous.  We all need to confess how that is real for us and confess that to our God of love, our friends and family, and to ourselves. 

None of us are so wonderful that we can’t admit that all that fancy glow we see radiating about ourselves is easily revealed for what it is once the light of inexorable truth shines on us. 

What is that inexorable truth?  We are all sinners.  I do not mean we do sinful things.  Sin is a theological concept that points to the brokenness that exists between us and every single relationship in our lives:  God, neighbors, enemies, loved ones. 

We are all strangers to one another and ourselves. 

All of us turn away from God.  To turn back, we need to acknowledge what blinds, hurts, or kills us.  To acknowledge that is to make confession.  Only then, can we follow Jesus on the path of self abasement that turns our ways to love.

When we look in the mirror, we see the one who is screwing up our lives.  That is discernment.  When we look in our God of love, we know the One who knows who we truly are.   That is confession.

Blessings…