Thoughts on Confession

Over the course of this semester, I've been engaged with a group of wonderful women who are exploring the spiritual disciplines with me. We've learned deeper truths regarding the necessity of meditation, silence, and solitude as well as learning how to practice celebration, submission, and confession.

Some of these topics have been easy to think about and apply to our own lives. Others have been incredibly difficult as we discover more about the fallen nature of mankind more practically in our own lives. Confession falls into this latter category for me.

Confession has always been something difficult for me to practice consistently because, if the Lord is aware of all the thoughts of my heart and mind already, what purpose does confession serve in my faith? As we've talked about this more, I've come to realize that confession isn't a discipline that needs to be implemented into my life because God doesn't know the bad things I've done already. It's one that needs to be implemented to offer me freedom as I continue living out my day to day life. 

God is not surprised by the matters I bring before Him. He is aware of them in me long before I am aware of them in myself. Confession is not a way for me to clue God in on the areas in my life I've fallen short. Instead, this act of laying before God my shortcomings and sins is a way for me to surrender the facade of control in my life I work so hard to build. By putting voice to these matters, I make room in my heart for the Lord to bring restoration and healing. I am making the choice to step out of the way and let God take the reins once again.

In addition to this group of godly women, I've had the opportunity to glean wisdom from a class I'm taking on the inductive study process to approaching the Bible. Through this class, we've learned to draw out of Scripture the meaning the text was written to express. So frequently when approaching the Word of God, we (myself included) come to the text with our emotions, life circumstances, and other knowledge at the front of our mind. When this happens, we risk reading something in the text that is not there. As I've practiced this process of studying the Word over the past several months, I've grown in my understanding of the character of God immensely. 

One of these lessons came as my class studied the Psalms and began to look at the various subgenres of Psalms found in Scripture. The more we looked at the text, we found that these authors were not afraid to lay anything at the feet of the Lord. From joyful Psalms of worship and thanksgiving, to corporate laments, to cries of anger, the Psalmists pour their hearts out to God in full. This too is an act of confession.

If I feel as though the Lord is far from me, not providing me answers to the questions I lay before Him or showing up in my life, He knows it. I cannot pretend to be close to Him because He knows the state of my heart and hears the thoughts I cannot put into words. Simply confessing to Him that I'm beginning to question His faithfulness or goodness or whatever it might be in the moment allows me freedom to move forward. I release the matter to God, and even though my words say I don't know that I believe Him, my act of confession shows Him an act of trust. 

God knows when I feel lonely in a crowded room, so rather than pretending the feelings of inadequacy that follow do not exist, I can confess these thoughts to Him. If I don't offer up my burden to the Lord, how can I rightly expect Him to lighten my load? I must confess my heart to the Lord if I wish to see Him move in these parts of my life. Until I confess, I am deluded into thinking I have control and do not offer the Lord room to move.

Is He capable of moving despite my stubborn heart? Absolutely. But when I offer Him the control, the process becomes one in which He and I work together rather than one where I fight against His will. The more I implement this practice in my life, the more frequently I am aware of God's hand in the matters I lift up to Him.

I find that confession often feels dirty and shameful as I don't like to admit that I don't have this whole life-thing figured out. But I'm beginning to see that it is a practice that brings about beauty and life. I'm still not great at confession even though I'm aware of the place it should hold in my life. Frequently I feel like God has to hit me over the head to get my attention so I can hear Him say, "I'm your Father, and I have already conquered sin and death. Find life in Me." But I'm learning, and God continues to grow me daily, and that's pretty neat.

What Lens Covers Your Eyes?

Despite that fact that I can't keep up with posting regularly ever during the school year, it would be nearly impossible to update the thoughts and lessons I've experienced throughout the past eight months in this one post. So I'm not going to try. Instead, I'm going to focus in on a lesson I learned while spending my spring break serving with an organization located in inner city Indianapolis that serves the populations most affected by poverty, homelessness, violence, substance abuse, and the like in the city.

Shepherd Community Center is located in the heart of East Indy. The immediate neighborhood they serve is a food desert meaning the only restaurants are individually owned and the only places to buy food are convenience stores with increased prices for all products. The neighborhood is also a job desert meaning that the only jobs available in the area are at family owned stores and restaurants or one of the several auto-repair shops off the main road. Most people do not have access to good-quality, nutritious food or a nearby, decent paying job.

The neighborhood also faces a crisis surrounding prostitution and narcotics. Around 60% of the homes in the area are abandoned which makes them the perfect locations for drug deals to occur or for drugs to be produced. Additionally, the several apartment complexes in the neighborhood are better described as brothels due to the large rates of prostitution that occur within their walls.

In the middle of all of this is a large population of children, and this population is where Shepherd focuses its efforts.

These children are victims of a vicious cycle known as generational poverty. A family stuck in the cycle of poverty can often track its roots back three or more generations, and if no intervention occurs, it can be predicted to occur in three or more generations in the future as well. Each new child born into a family living in the system of generational poverty is a victim of the system that grows up not knowing life could look any differently.

Shepherd focuses in on this population through education, and they offer classes for preschool through fifth grade at their Community Center as well as after-school activities that are offered through high school. At school, all children are provided breakfast and lunch -- for many the only two meals they will eat that day -- and after-school participants receive a snack as well. The students receive a Christian education as Shepherd is a faith-based organization. The teachers and staff believe that the best way to reach these students is to meet their needs at every type of poverty they face.

Every type of poverty.

As my team served with Shepherd, we had a chance to sit down and learn more about poverty on an academic level to help us make sense of the experiences we were having and the people we were meeting. One thing we talked in depth about was the fact that poverty is not a one-faceted problem. I cannot go to someone living in East Indianapolis, give them money and expect that all their problems will be solved. I may have momentarily solved their financial poverty, but I have done nothing to help them overcome the other types of poverty which include the following: emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, lack of support systems, lack of relationships and role models, lack of knowledge of hidden rules, lack of self-advocacy, and lack of knowledge of organizational structures.

Together, these ten types of poverty must be addressed to help a family break the generational cycle that victimizes each new child born into the family line. How this is done is not a set process, and many will argue about what works and what doesn't. What I learned most about the existence of these ten types of poverty is how deeply they shape how an individual views the world.

As a member of the middle-class, I lack little in these ten areas. Because of that, my understanding of the world is created. I am a future-minded, money-managing, educationally-focused, object-acquiring, acceptance-seeking individual. I believe if I have an education, work hard, and save my money, I can have whatever I desire in life -- and I'm always thinking in terms of that for my future.

Kia, a young woman I met at a church service at Shepherd has grown up in poverty. She currently lives in a women's shelter in a neighborhood near the Center. Her understanding of the world is quite different than mine despite the fact that we grew up less than two hours away from each other. She is a present-minded, money-spending, entertainment-seeking, fate-believing, survival-focused individual. If she earns money at work today, she now has food to eat tonight and perhaps enough money to buy more minutes for her phone or a new pair of the latest style of shoes. She is thinking in terms of surviving today. Tomorrow is when she will think about tomorrow.

As I have wrestled with these truths, it's been difficult to come to terms with the fact that because I was born into my family in the community I was raised in, my understanding of how the world works and what role I play in it has been set. And the same holds true for individuals in East Indianapolis or the part of town I avoid driving through after dark back home. Their worldview was established for them without their consent.

In order to establish relationships across these worldview gaps, an understanding of each others' worldview must occur first. Until I recognize why I respond differently in a situation than does my new friend Kia, we will never be able to bridge the gap and work together as is necessary for reconciliation. And until I can understand how a parent views the world he is raising his child in, my attempts to educate that child from my worldview will fail. Understanding is the key to change.

The following links are resources that were provided to us during our conversations at Shepherd Community Center regarding poverty. The first offers a series of quizzes that ask you whether you could survive in poverty, middle-class, or wealth as well as if you could be married to someone from one of these backgrounds. The second is a chart that goes into more details of some of the characteristics of each social class and how they view the world. Feel free to look at them if you're interested in a closer look as some of what I've touched on above.

This is the beginning of a much larger conversation I hope to have regarding social classes, reconciliation, and poverty alleviation. If you have thoughts, questions, or resources to contribute to this conversation, please don't hesitate to share them. I don't pretend to have all (or any) of the answers to these issues and would love to be in conversation with others who desire to understand with fresh eyes.