Weird Things to Think About As You Wake Up

I haven't figured out why, but I woke up this morning thinking about Catholocism. Not that I'm Catholic, and not that I really understand anything about Catholic theology . . . . but apparently it's so deeply seeded in my subconcious that sometimes it floods my brain(s) whilst I'm sleeping. I did watch Raising Helen which has a Lutheran Pastor in it . . . he was dressed kinda like a Catholic Priest.

So, anyway . . . I was thinking about confession . . . thinking about how symbolic it is, and even though many protestants rag on it because, "Jesus provided a direct connection with God, therefore we don't need to go through anyone else.", I think it has some merit.

I think like most other things in the religious world, it's a symbol that we've put too much emphasis on. We do the same things with other things too: Salvationists and their uniforms; charismatics and their speaking in tongues, etc. It's like we take our one piece of theology that we differ on and emphasize it so that people will know that whats different about us; what you get if you go to our church.

Confession, for example, is great. We need to be accountable to someone. I think it's clear from Scripture that we don't need anyone else to speak for us to be saved. It's not really up for discussion. But so many of us think (perhaps also subconciously) that that translates into doing whatever we want to, as long as we keep asking God to forgive us. But that's equally as described in the Bible. BUT, at least in my life, if I knew that I had to (or was expected) to go and tell my PASTOR that I'd be lying and lusting, I'd probably have some second thoughts about it. For whatever reason, we don't invest anything into the lives of others and we wouldn't think about have a weekly meeting with a friend to discuss our weaknesses and decide to do something about it.

Something to think about.

Grace.