Corporate Confession

This past Sunday this was our corporate confession.

“Now is the time for fasting and prayer begging our Father’s forgiveness for destroying his creation with our carelessness and greed. We are all guilty. Have mercy on this country, O Lord. Free us from our addiction. Restore your ocean. Amen.”

It was put up on the projection screen and we were encouraged to read it as a group. I recited it, though there was something about it that bothered me. I chewed it over for a few days, trying to decide what it was.

Ultimately I can to this conclusion. I’ve always looked at corporate confession as us confessing our individual sins as one body. It didn’t feel like that was what we were doing there. It felt like we were confessing sins we committed as a body. Added to that, it felt like there was an agenda there. Now agendas aren’t necessarily a bad thing. However, even if we agree with the points on an agenda, we need to think about whether or not it’s a good thing by itself.

The thing it reminded me of most was the notion that many evangelicals put forth that’s relayed in 2 Chronicles 7:14

if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

They use that verse to say that if we’ll just repent of the immorality that we have in our country that we’ll prosper. The immorality in question is often of the sort not actually practiced by the evangelical in question. So really they’re not repenting so much as they are finger pointing and blaming our lack of healing on the fact that those dirty sinners aren’t repenting.

What we “confessed” on Sunday felt an awful lot like that.

Now I know that we’re all guilty to varying degrees of hurting the planet and of greed. I also know that we’re all dependent on (if not addicted to) oil. Does that make this confession good/accurate? So I asked our pastor to expand on this. He had this to say:

I believe the church is responsible for confessing the corporate sins of the culture. We confess racism, violence, poverty, greed, and other issues that are everywhere. We bear the burden of the culture and ask God to come to help. We pray for our communities and do our best to represent them to God as we pray for their transformation and live that transformation in them. We mostly confess individual sin. Perhaps that’s not so good. It is good for us to understand the corporate nature of our faith and our link to the community we live in.

I agree with him that we as the church should pray for our communities. I also agree with his last sentence. It is good to understand the corporate nature of our faith and our link to the community. I’m not so sure that we’re responsible for confessing the “sins of our culture”.

Then again Nehemiah prays this in Chapter 1.

“O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands, 6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s house, have committed against you. 7 We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.

But is that the same as confessing our part in what the oil companies have done? Whatever part that may be. I’m still conflicted about it, seeing the good and bad in it. I’m curious as to what your take is.

  • http://www.stormherald.com/ Christopher Walker

    Very interesting. I'm glad something is niggling you about this, because I have that same feeling reading that confession. It seems loaded with political baggage and doesn't seem to focus on the spiritual problem so much as the political one. Perhaps the intersection of politics and spirituality is part of the tension I'm feeling.

    It also concerns me that there doesn't seem to be any specificity to what the sin is that we are committing. What does “Free us from our addiction” mean? Am I guilty of spilling tens of thousands of gallons of oil into the gulf? It seems to me the problem was the result of a freak accident and lax safety precautions, not that drilling for oil is inherently environmentally unsound. If we didn't use oil in any of our products, would this not have happened? Then what about all of the technology that relies on oil that we've used to help save other human beings, like the plastic in medical equipment or the fuel used to fly relief supplies and doctors to Haiti? My point with these questions is to point out that the confession highlights an awfully vague sin we seem to be committing as a culture.* And maybe that's why I wouldn't feel right praying that together with my church body. If there is any sin on our part as a culture, perhaps we ought to have a better idea of what that is before we say we're guilty of it and ask for forgiveness. It doesn't strike me as Biblical to be vague in naming our trespasses to our God.

    *I would have the same problem if the sin we were naming in our confession was somehow out of step with a conservative ideology, so I don't think my concerns are political.

  • Leigh

    I like your blog post and agree with it.

    I'm not sure of the soundness of the doctrine of the particular confession he was leading.

    I think that we as believers can pray for other believers and even the “lot of believers in the country”. We can admit the sins that are common to all people. Maybe even … See More specifically lack of faith and leaning to worldliness. However, should we bear the burden of asking forgiveness for the sins of non-believers? We should pray for their salvation and for God's grace to move in their lives. We can even pray for God's movement in the direction of a country or it's leaders. All of that is different from asking forgiveness for the greed of an organization run by who knows what kind of people.

    The old testament prayers of the prophets were for a chosen group of people who were expected to act a certain way and do certain things clearly spelled out by God. That group practiced their sin as a culture and that is why the prophet begged for God to forgive them and restore them.

    Our Nation as you put it to me so often, is not Christian. It is filled with all types of people not bound by God's mandates. As believers, we are held to a higher standard and through sanctification become more able to live out a life that reflects love for our God, our fellow man, and the world that we live in. We know, that we cannot expect that kind of behavior from non-believers.

    I would like to see an example in the Scriptures of where we are called to plead forgiveness of non-believers. (The only place I can think of where prayer for non-Isrealites is given is when Jesus is on the cross. He clearly prays a prayer over all humanity, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”)

  • http://www.biblearchive.com/blog Rey Reynoso

    If a mandate of the Lord is to care for what's been given (the Earth is included in that) then asking forgiveness for the way our society (which includes companies) has mistreated that creation is proper for the Christian to do, at the very least in an eschatalogical sense which we're constantly proclaiming as part of the Gospel.

    I think it's equally apropos to ask forgiveness for abortion, poverty, and callousness (and all other sinfulness even if we're not a nation comprised of a covenant community) to God as long as it is done with a real sense of humility, honesty and eschatalogical expectation. Society won't do it (not yet anyway) so Christians (who know better and have been placed where they are by God) should be doing it on their behalf and with a sense of solidarity as part of the human family. I'd look at Nehemiah, Ezra 9:5-15, Daniel 9:3-19, Ezekiel 22:30-31, Exodus 32:7-14, Job 16:21, I Timothy 2 :1-2, Jeremiah 29:7

    So it is better to pray these things honestly and definitely not attributing evil to those whose voices are united in said prayer (1 Cor 13:4-7)

  • Ricky Foxx

    Scott, something you wrote actually sits well with me! I too was troubled by that particular confession. In a former church, there were liturgies written and read that addressed the environment and our responsibility. I often felt there was a political agenda to those confessions and I did not 'enjoy' reading them. Sunday's confession reminded me of them. I agree there are sins we individually commit that disgrace and abuse the earth and its resources. And we indeed should confess those do our individual and corporate parts to 'Keep America Beautiful' (as well as the whole of our planet). But as others have said, I personally did not cause the oil spill and was a bit bothered by the wording of the confession. Our prayer should be that the leak gets plugged, the mess cleaned up, and those responsible work hard to prevent this type accident in the future. And we could also pray that God will heal the earth, oceans and all the life affected by the spill. Yes we did not cause it, but you know we'll end up paying for it each time we fill our tanks.

  • http://jonwelborn.com Jon

    This is pretty much where I am on it. I see a substantive difference between this type of confession (“a real sense of humility, honesty and eschatological expectation”) and the type that blames natural disasters on sundry “sins” committed by our society.

    We are stewards of creation, we rightly pursue the proper use of it's resources in having dominion over it and we must be honest and responsible when we misuse it. We don't get to say “well I didn't cause it so I don't have to apologize for it”, because in reality we are all guilty of abusing the created order.

    On a somewhat related note, this confession is brilliant if for no other reason than the fact that we're still talking about it three days later…When's the last time that happened?

  • http://jonwelborn.com Jon

    This is pretty much where I am on it. I see a substantive difference between this type of confession (“a real sense of humility, honesty and eschatological expectation”) and the type that blames natural disasters on sundry “sins” committed by our society.

    We are stewards of creation, we rightly pursue the proper use of it's resources in having dominion over it and we must be honest and responsible when we misuse it. We don't get to say “well I didn't cause it so I don't have to apologize for it”, because in reality we are all guilty of abusing the created order.

    On a somewhat related note, this confession is brilliant if for no other reason than the fact that we're still talking about it three days later…When's the last time that happened?

  • Orion

    Ok. So say we've all said this. We've all joined in this corporate confession. Is that it? Have we washed our hands clean? Yes?

    If not then what comes after the words. After the posturing? What are *you* going to do next besides return to church and say the words in unison once more?

  • spiritualtramp

    Fair question. If there's nothing more after that, it is posturing. Confession/repentance in Christianity should include action appropriate to the sin.

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