Revealing Our Dark Places: The Privilege That Brings Healing

Interspersed through Philip Yancey's fine new book on prayer is a series of drop-in boxes in which "neighbors, other authors, fellow church members, spiritual mentors, ordinary people" talk about their experiences with prayer, good and bad. In one box, a man identified only as John writes:

My friends in AA tell us we're as sick as our secrets. I know many folks with dark secrets, and nowhere to take them. Sometimes they go crazy, literally insane, because they can't stand being alone with their dark thoughts and secrets. Or they get loaded, or get high.

Even those active in the church can harbor secrets that kill them. John goes on:

An acquaintance of mine ran a street ministry just a few blocks away. He had secrets about failures in his past and financial pressures in his present that he never told anyone. They bottled up inside him. One day his wife walked in the front door and found his body swaying from a rope. I cannot tell you what a blow that was for the people he ministered to.

I agree with John. We can't keep secret sins or fears bottled up within us. It isn't that we should vent everything to the world, engaging in the kind of verbal diarrhea we see displayed on many of the daytime talk shows. But there is something therapeutic about exposing our dark secrets to light.

Doing so can rob our secrets of their power. Once, as a young adolescent, I was dogged by a large and foreboding thought. It haunted me through every waking moment of my day. It was such a horrible thought, one I thought that no good person could entertain. It tripped me into a series of obsessive-compulsive behaviors that, owing to the irrationality that dark secrets can trigger, I thought might fend off the thoughts.

Finally, one day, unable to take it any more, I went to my mother and told her what had been going on inside my head. While it must have been disturbing for my mother to hear, the moment I tearfully got the words out of my mouth, something amazing happened. The dreaded thoughts had no power over me. Exposed to the light, the thoughts shriveled and went away. I literally stopped thinking about something horrible that had hounded me for weeks.

"Confession is good for the soul" is more than a hackneyed saying. It's an unalterable truth.

A man I know, a responsible, loving father, not a Christian, huddled with me one night in a corner at a party. He began telling me about his past history of drug abuse and the combination of guilt and foreboding for his children that personal history caused him. He was afraid that his body had sustained permanent damage, afraid too that his past would become known to his children and blunt his efforts to keep his kids from making the same mistakes that he had made.

But after recounting his concerns, without our discussing any potential solutions, a look of relief crossed his face. With a smile, he alluded to the adage about confession and said, "I guess it's true. Confession really is good for the soul!"

The Bible teaches that confessing to God regarding the ways we hurt God, others, and ourselves, is an essential element to a relationship with God. To those who want life with God, Jesus says, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). The Good News to which Jesus refers, of course, is the message that God gives new and everlasting lives to all who will repent--turn from their sins--and follow Christ.

I find that divulging my secrets to God, secrets that He already knows about but never forces me to discuss with Him, is always the beginning of healing from the things that might otherwise kill me--in body, mind, and spirit.

Israel's King David learned all about the pain created by keeping dark secrets and about the healing power that goes with confessing them. Recalling a time when he refused to discuss his secrets with God, David writes:

While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer...

Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. [Psalm 32:3-5]

We Lutherans, like many other Christians, always include confession and the proclamation of God's forgiveness as part of our weekly public worship celebrations. There are several good reasons for doing this, I think:

• First, by doing so, we acknowledge that all of us are part of an imperfect human race, each of us in equal need of God's forgiveness and equally worthy of it.
• Second, we deliberately set aside time to actually confess our sin and receive God's forgiveness.
• Third, we remind one another that confession needs to be a daily part of our lives, regularly acknowledging our secrets to God so that we can experience the healing that comes from His forgiveness.

The Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death. Having experienced the heavy weight of unconfessed sin in my life, I know how close to death a person can feel when he or she refuses to acknowledge the dark places. One of the prayers I frequently offer, in fact, is, "Thank You, God for not killing me. Thank You for filling me with Your life!" I agree with John, who writes in that drop-in box in Yancey's book:

The fact that we're still alive shows that God has more tolerance for whatever those secrets represent than we may give God credit for.

There's nothing we can't tell God. He's shockproof and He bears healing in His wings. Revealing our dark places to God isn't some odious duty. It's a privilege that brings renewal and life!