confession – good for the soul, hard on the fingernails

I slipped this week.

I was researching a blog topic, and followed a link that came back from a search…and I was reading some material that is outside the lines. This dovetails neatly into a discussion we were having at my group a couple of weeks back; the issue was how we should avoid sin and where sin starts.

When I first clicked to the page, it took a minute for me to realize where I was. No, really, stop laughing. There are places in my blog that sound very similar to what I was reading there, at first. Then I realized, this guy isn’t confessing for the sake of illustration or as an apology – he was quite proud of his stories.

That’s the point where I needed to steer away. But I didn’t. I bookmarked the page. And I returned to it, a couple of times.

Here comes the comic relief. We were up late Friday night, and I stayed on the couch after my wife went upstairs. I clicked on the link, and decided I was thirsty, so I went to get a drink from the kitchen.

I heard my wife’s footsteps on the stairs as I turned off the faucet. Too late, she was downstairs. Maybe she’d come to the kitchen.

No such luck. She was warm, so she went to the living room to adjust the thermostat.

My laptop was about three feet away, facing the thermostat.

I walked in briskly, and tried to position myself between her and the computer. She was fairly tired, so I don’t know if she sensed my panic. The air wasn’t kicking in; would I take a look? I leaned over her shoulder, she stepped to the side, and the next thing I knew she was standing there staring at the computer.

My bride is not blessed with tremendous eyesight, and that may be the only reason I have unbroken fingers and a laptop today.

I’m not sure what she saw. She said nothing, and didn’t react visibly. We were both so tired, I decided to see if she said anything about it. She didn’t. I had to get out early Saturday morning, and we didn’t have any time to talk until that afternoon. It was a very long morning, and I gave a lot of thought to just waiting to see if she would bring anything up – but I know better. It was my slip, my transgression; the ball was in my court, whether she even realized what had happened or not.

I chose the better option. When we had some time with the kids out of earshot, I told her what had happened and asked her forgiveness.

I didn’t enjoy the talk that followed.

But my heart is lighter, and I was able to worship this morning, not weighed down by the guilt of a sin covered in secrecy.

There are several directions I could go with this. For now, I’ll just say that I am still convinced that being real with my spouse is much more important than us having “peace” (peace being defined as blissful ignorance, in this case). I am reminded that I’m still a struggler, and that I am still vulnerable (and probably always will be). Finally, I am relieved that I can look at what I did with a touch of disgust and shame, but mostly with a sense of remorse; in the past, it probably would have been more a sense of resignation and defeat.

judgement, or sympathy?

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:18 that we should flee fornication. Every sin we do is outside the body, except for sexual sin. In that, we sin against our own body (my wording).

I recognize that fornication has become a punchline in our society (thank you, Church Lady), but the point is that the Bible makes a distinction about sexual sin. Interesting to note, though, that the distinction is that we are hurting ourselves directly with sexual activity outside the Plan.

I think the church misses something here.

Sexual sin receives “special” treatment from churches as if Paul ended this section of his letter with an exhortation to immediately castrate the vile offender; what Paul does say is to explain that the body is a temple, and the offender is violating the temple.

By the way, this is not an attempt to justify anything. Sexual activity outside of marriage has mental, spiritual, and (sometimes) physical consequences; that should never be dismissed or trivialized. Even the person who seeks solace in self-gratification is cheapening the value of what is supposed to happen with one other person in an image of the spiritual connection between us and God.

So how does your church body react to a woman who comes into a service, wearing no ring and obviously pregnant? Men have the advantage here – we can be totally promiscuous, and there will be no outward sign unless we contract some horrendous disease. But it is sad to me to see how people with strong faith backgrounds generally react to a disclosure of sexual errors.

A close friend carried the weight of a relationship that included an abortion around for years, living in fear of the reaction she would get if her closest friends ever found out.

When she chose to disclose, I would say the reaction lent credence to her fears.

When I have disclosed my history to people who I believed were spiritually mature and knew me well enough to know where my heart is now, I have been disappointed. The two guys I thought would be the best prospects for accountability responded predictably – one was dismissive that I had a problem, the other withdrew to the safety of surface-level interaction.

I am fortunate that I have an accountability relationship with a couple of guys who don’t let me off the hook. They understand that there is a difference between the thing that I was and the man I am becoming. If I drop the ball (present tense), they don’t just dismiss it – they force me to face it. But they do not judge me as something less because of my sordid history (past tense), because they understand grace.

So the Church Lady was an accurate caricature, unfortunately, of the way many in the church respond to sexual brokenness.  There is a place for judgment, no question. Christ judged those who knew the Law the best; but He had compassion and mercy for those who were ignorant and repentant.

We should learn from that.

married…and dating

I had a date Monday night. My Monday night group was having a big social dinner, and I was overdue for a date. But it was not with my wife. More on that in a moment.

In many cultures in the world, men have rites of passage where the adolescent boy is invited into the circle of men. He is welcomed at their fire, at their table at the pub, to take part in their rituals.

We don’t have anything quite like that here. There isn’t really any point at which we say to a boy, “You are now a man.” I’ve heard some suggest that the first drivers’ license/car keys is a substitute, but that isn’t uniquely manly.

I have a couple of men with whom I meet regularly for accountability. I suppose I could, someday, invite my son to join us for those breakfasts…but that doesn’t quite do the job either.

And so I took my son out on a date Monday night.

Does the word “date” make you uncomfortable in this context? If you consider a date to be something you do to get a “happy ending,” I can understand; but I’m defining a “date” as a social engagement to improve the relationship between two people.

He’s only three, so the level of interaction is somewhat different than when my wife and I go out.

I took him to a restaurant that sits in an old train station – he’s nuts about trains – and then to a bookstore where they have a train table set up and several of the Thomas the Tank Engine toys outand usable.

It was an evening about him.

It was my way of saying, “I know I correct you a lot – too much for your age. I want you to know that I love you, I love to be with you, and you are great just as you are.” He really is great. He is smart, he is goofy, he sees everything through eyes of wonder. I could learn a few things from him.

Three years old. Obviously not yet time to take him out to hunt wild boar in the moonlight with spears yet. But it is the right time to start spending some serious one-on-one time, establishing a pattern so I don’t look back somewhere down the road and say, “Why didn’t I take more time with him?“

Maybe if I spend the time now investing in the relationship, he won’t be as likely to quickly divest himself of me when he reaches his teen years.

And maybe, if I am consistent, he will someday have memories of a dad who took the time for him, and who held him in higher regard than the other stuff in his life.