Relief Without Redemption

 

It happens almost every Bible study, every coffee date, every time I write a blog that is quickly labeled “relatable.”

Someone is honest about their sin, someone bares their soul, someone opens up about something they’ve been hiding for years.

 And it is good.

It is good to be honest and it is good to let each other know that they are not alone. It is good that the norm in many churches is shifting from secret sins and plastic smiles to one of openness and honesty.

But I am beginning to wonder if we have made an idol of honesty and turned vulnerability into a virtue in and of itself.

We’ve bought the world’s weird lie about our “authentic selves” – that they’re not just worth uncovering, they’re good enough to live in.

Which is weird, because we know the truth about our “authentic selves” – they’re broken. They’re sinful and broken and corrupted by evil. And the benefit in baring them is to realize the depth of grace required and come to the foot of the cross once again.

I am done with cathartic soul-baring without any real redemption. I can’t just be honest about my failures. I have to let conviction set in.

Being vulnerable is not enough. I need to seek more than emotional tell-alls, I need to seek true and powerful conviction. I need to be receptive to getting called out, whether the Holy Spirit works directly in my heart or through the words of another.

In the name of “being real,” we’ve started holding up the grittiest testimonies and celebrating the best admissions of sin. It’s a competition to admit the worst thing, as if the one testimony we all share could somehow be outdone: I was dead, and now I am alive.

I’m all about celebrating the work God has done in broken people. But I fear we’ve made vulnerability an end goal, instead of a pathway towards reconciliation and redemption. It’s relief without redemption – I can enjoy the emotional high of sharing my struggles without getting my hands dirty. I can talk a big game without earnestly repenting.

Conviction isn’t comfortable, especially when it comes through someone else’s words. But it’s so important. Otherwise we’re just a bunch of sinners talking about what is holding us bondage, forgetting that we have been set free. He has given us freedom from sin, but if we keep admiring each other’s broken chains without stepping away from them, we won’t experience it in its fullness.

So I’m praying that I’ll confront my sins – not just that they would be revealed to me, but that I’d have the courage and conviction to get up out of my pit and take the hand of Jesus.

I can’t “fix” my sin, but I am refusing the grace of my Savior if I continue to trade in true conviction for cathartic “authenticity.”