Time to 'fess up?

In one of my favorite books, “Blue Like Jazz,” author Donald Miller wrote about the time he and a group of Christian friends put a confession booth in the middle of their college campus, the very liberal Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

It was during the annual Ren Fayre, which Miller described as a naked, drunken orgy.

The confession booth, however, wasn’t for the naked, drunken students to confess their sins, but for the Christians to confess theirs to the other students.

The students, Miller said, were skeptical at first; Miller and the others were dressed as monks among people who were pretty much not wearing anything.

But these people were also curious, and one by one started stepping into the booth.

The first person Miller confessed to was Jake. Miller told him: “Jesus said to feed the poor, and I have not done very much of that. Jesus said to love those who persecute me, but I tend to lash out, especially if I feel threatened, if my ego gets threatened.

“Jesus did not mix (faith) with politics — I grew up doing that and it got in the way of the central message of Christ. I know that was wrong,” Miller said, “and I know that a lot of people will not listen to the words of Christ because people like me, who know him, carry our own agendas into the conversation rather than just relaying the message Christ wanted to get across.

“There’s a lot more,” Miller told Jake, “and I’m sorry for it all.”

Miller said Jake listened, and so did a lot of other students. They were mostly polite and gracious, although no one asked how they could become a Christian. But that wasn’t the point.

Miller also said it changed something in him.

He wrote, “I felt very connected to God because I had confessed so much to so many people and had gotten so much off my chest and I had been forgiven by the people I had wronged with my indifference and judgmentalism…I had made amends to God so many years before, but now I had made amends to the world.

“It felt kind of cool, kind of different,” he wrote. “It was very relieving.”

Years ago, my church did something similar. There wasn’t a booth and the pastors weren’t dressed like monks, but we as a church invited the community to come and hear us confess how we Christians have not represented Christ well.

Friends, the church in North America is in crisis. Not every individual church, but Christianity in our nation as a whole.

I often think of the Apostle Paul’s words, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Paul was talking about God’s plan to reach the Gentiles with the good news of the gospel using the church as examples of God’s redeeming grace — the light of the world, a city on a hill, as Jesus said we were to be.

I believe one of the most endearing and winsome ways we show this “hope of glory” is by living a life characterized by confession, confessing to God and to others.

It is written, “Blessed is the (one) whose sins are forgiven” (Psalm 32:1) and also, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us…and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

We have a God who forgives! That’s good news.

What would happen if that’s what we who call ourselves Christians believed and lived?

It would be kind of cool, kind of different.

And people would take notice.

Nancy Kennedy can be reached at 352-564-2927 or by email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com.