“It Is What It Is”: How Confession Can Save the World

We are tempted to think that all we should be saying to others and about others is something positive about them or our circumstances with them because what they say, what they do, indeed who they are, is not actually who they are. They may be throwing invective, or even killing babies for God’s sake, literally, but they are still human beings who have some modicum, however feeble, or hardened or hidden, of light deep within them that, if honored and nurtured, and encouraged, will bring them to their senses and thus to caring and compassion rather than destruction and death. Those who are vile and vindictive are not actually that, but virtually that, and live rather in a state of possibility and potential to become their true and best selves, their complete and whole beings, who fulfill their personal destiny of unity with Goodness and the Divine.[i]

 We say all this, we are “theologians of glory” as Martin Luther would call us, because it is necessary for our own sanity and sanctity to believe it about ourselves.[ii] If we are not in a constant state of becoming this means we are not really alive. This thinking about life goes back to at least Aristotle, who defined being as the constant state of possibility. One cannot simply or only say that something or someone “is”. We must also say what that Thing or One is not and yet could be. Listen to what Steven Paulson says about this:

“For Aristotle, or at least the scholastics who used him, motion is the mode by which the unknown future belongs to the present. Motion is the ‘present absence’ of those very absent things that are just about to come into being. The key is that theology got stuck on ‘present absence’ and its picture of the Christian in constant motion that requires not knowing in order to keep it’s movement pressing ever forward: a thing is what it is, and what it is not-yet will be. This assumes the overall essence of God as the eternal law, and our human participation in it, since law, above all, is what ‘yet will be.’ God as law is a particular way of being beyond being and makes all things hang of what the law says ‘yet will be.’ Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (London, 1963), 136-137.”[iii]

I am not going to nor need to argue with physics regarding things being in constant motion. In fact, I think it fascinating and true. But applying that to our psyche and soul is another matter. I said above that we buy into this thinking that we are always becoming something we are not and always becoming better and better because it protects our sanity and sanctity. Sanity: we really don’t think it’s a good idea to keep doing something that doesn’t work and expect it to magically work. Sanctity: what could possibly be holy about someone we know (in that proverbial “heart of hearts”), our Self, is not? There must be something more.

Countering this possibility thinking is actuality thinking. It is saying what a thing is, not what it could be. To say “what a thing is” does not mean it’s not virtual or not unreal. It means actual only and not what is possible at the same time.

So, back to our being “theologians of glory.” Luther said that theologians of glory call evil good and good evil.[iv] In other words, glory theologians look through things to see other things instead of looking at things and seeing what they are. But what if there were this other way, this way of looking with actuality and not possibility? What if instead of being theologians of glory we were what Luther calls “theologians of the cross” to “say what a thing is”?[v] What if we called good only good, and not evil as well. And called evil only evil, and not good as well. In other words, we “say what a thing is” instead of what it could be or might be either with a little uncovering or a little, maybe even a lot, of prodding.

 What might this mean for the crucifixion of Jesus?

The crucifixion of Jesus is what it is. It is the execution of an innocent man and not some display and insight into the justice of God on whatever level you might identify or imagine.  It is only the injustice of humanity and the innocent in dereliction. This crucifixion saves no one anything but the Romans the expense of jailing Jesus and the Religious Leaders the trouble of quieting Jesus time and time again so the Rabble doesn’t get riled and cause Rome to cut the Religious Leaders off of their political and social, not to say also, economic largesse.

It is what it is.

And there stands God wondering just how She could possibly make this good news, of our autonomy and agency meaning nothing while God’s sovereignty meaning everything, more clear?

Now, wait just a minute! It’s “good news” that we’ve got nothing but the truth that we not only do right and get nothing for it but also do wrong and get nothing because of it? It’s “good news” that we have zero to show and zero to pay? It’s “good news” that we are zero? It’s “good news” that we are as good as dead?

 Well, yes. Yes. It is when we realize that resurrection does not work on live bodies, live things. By definition, resurrection works on dead bodies, dead things. So, the perfect match: our dead zone of a life and God’s resurrecting work.

Wait again! Isn’t resurrection only possible and not actual? Well, true enough. But it’s not possible and actual at the same time. What is actual is only actual. Deadness is not something else at the same time. Can something else then happen? Something like resurrection? I will tell you this: I hope so! And I will tell you that the rest of the Jesus story simply pops with possibility after the actual deadness. The four Gospel accounts in the Bible try hard to describe what happens after Jesus dies and while deadness is deadness, God’s aliveness is bigger and badder  (not a word, but it works!) and wins.

What might this have to say about calling out the bad in people when it is bad and the good in people when it is good?

When people are bad they are actually bad and not also virtually good because they also have some goodness lying beneath. It does not mean the badness is irredeemable. It simply means it is what it is, and should be condemned.

When people are good they are actually good and not also virtually bad because they also have some badness lying beneath. It does not mean the goodness is redemptive. It simply means it is what it is, and should be embraced.

 So when we call out the badness in others that we see we are not condemning them, we are condemning what they do. When we call out the badness and call for them to change and expect a change it’s not because we think deep within that person doing bad things there is goodness that should prevail. It’s not that “Better Angels” or a Better Self must surface. We simply call for the change.

 What this means, practically speaking, requires something we would rather not do and indeed we think is an outdated religious practice: Confession. We would rather not do it because we never want to self-incriminate. We think it outdated for a reason that is actually correct: we don’t need to name wrongs in order to win God’s favor.  But Confession never was only naming wrongs. It’s core is naming mistrust and unbelief (we will not trust God and believe that God saves us, let alone those we hate, simply because God is God and not because we have something to say about it or contribute to it). We then throw the baby (naming of our unwillingness, not just inability, to entrust ourselves only to God and not our religious practices and beliefs) out with the bath water (the ritual of Confession and Forgiveness).

 We need people on the Left and the Right to go to Confession. Daily. We don’t need the Sides to try to see the better person deep within those on the other Side (“can’t we just see that we are all just human beings!?”). We need the Sides to confess they themselves not only do bad things to others, and themselves, but they themselves refuse to trust God but rather trust their own brand of believing and behaving [and end up chanting things like “I Am Not Ashamed!” instead of doing things like, well, listening to the poor (I’m sorry but I read Proverbs 21, Psalm 12 and Luke 20 this morning and I heard a lot about that)].

Confession says what a person is: the core being mistrust, distrust, and unbelief as well as the appendages of misbehavior, disobedience and unruliness.

It does not say at the same time what a person also is or might yet be. It’s not possibility thinking.

It says what a person is, and then has to do the thing that is doing nothing: await somebody to raise them from that dead. It’s actuality thinking.

It is What It Is.

The forgiveness declared by the Pastor as a word directly from God, in first person, is just that resurrection. That word too Is What It Is.

Earlier I stated that the “Jesus story simply pops with possibility after the actual deadness.“ Now I’ll apply that to us: our story “pops with possibility” when the forgiveness is declared and given!

My invitation, if not admonition, is not for us to try to love each other more, see the good in all and love that.

My call is for us to go to Confession every day, see the bad in all and Who loves and forgives that Actually and makes that Whole, Righteous, Good and brimming now with Possibility.

I’m sorry that my solution for saving the world isn’t sexier.

Confession.[vi] Really!?

Yes.

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[i] No offense to Michelle Obama, with whom I totally track politically, but her book of a few years ago, The Light We Carry, is based on a well-meaning but misguided notion: every person at our core is a person of good and goodwill and not bad and bad will. But do we not have some good in us? All of us? I cannot say we do not. By the looks of it I can say a lot of us have a lot of good. But then, there is that opposite. And cannot there be change, from good to evil, from evil to good? Of course there can be change. That is not the question. The question is whether evil is something other (More? Less?) than evil and whether good is something other (More? Less?) than good. No, in both cases they are what they are. And so what are we to do with that? Do I mean to say Good is good for Nothing? And Evil is for Naught? I’m afraid so.

[ii]See On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518, Gerhard Forde, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997, for just what a “theologian of glory” and a “theologian of the cross” are all about.

[iii] Luther’s Outlaw God: Volume 2, Hidden in the Cross, Steven Paulson, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2019, 332.

[iv]On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518, Gerhard Forde, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997, pp. 81-90.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Below find the kind of Confession of which I speak. I have taken the basic text from Evangelical Lutheran Worship, (Fortress Press, 2006), my denomination’s (The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) worship book, and made some changes. Of course there are other ways to write it, and this is nothing perfect. But I do attempt to name the core sin, unwillingness to trust only God, and not only the tangential (not to say unimportant) sins, the things we do wrong and the things right that we don’t do.

Most Merciful God,

We confess that we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves. We live in the condition of sin where we are unwilling to allow you to love all people and care for all people not only now, but for eternity, without ourselves actively believing the right thing or behaving the right way so that you will indeed love and care. We have also sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We will not love you because by your Power and Position you take away our ability to decide on and affect our eternal future. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. We confess that you are Mercy, but we would ask today that this mercy would be known also by us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Holy Name. Amen.