Living with Your Honest-to-God Self: The Unavoidable Task - Living With Our Past
By Don Bromley
Today: Living With Our Past; Confronting Guilt and Shame with Honesty
I will examine myself with fearless honesty, confessing my faults to myself, to God, and someone I trust.
Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32).
The psalmist says, “Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight! Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty!” (Psalm 32:1-2)
“Because God loves us unconditionally—along with our dark sides—we don’t need to dodge ourselves. In the light of this love the pain of self-knowledge can be at the same time the beginning of our healing.” - Richard Rohr
The psalmist says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.” (Psalm 139:23-24)
Proverbs 28:13: People who conceal their sins will not prosper,—they’ll never get well—but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy.
Suggestions for Taking a Moral Inventory
1. Take your time.
2. Write it down.
3. Be specific.
4. Don’t compare.
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8)
“The Lord’s light penetrates the human spirit, exposing every hidden motive.” (Proverbs 20:27)
“For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.” (2 Corinthians 7:10)
“Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)
“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” (James 5:16)
“He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone…Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a ‘real sinner’ is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy… Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. Confession in the presence of a brother is the profoundest kind of humiliation. It hurts, it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to pride… In the confession of concrete sins, the old man dies a painful, shameful death before the eyes of a brother. Because this humiliation is so hard, we continually scheme to evade confessing to a brother. Our eyes are so blinded that they no longer see the promise and the glory in such abasement” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Rejoice not over me, O my enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me.
I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause, and executes judgment for me: he will bring me out to the light, and I shall look upon his vindication. (Micah 7:8-9)