They say confession is good for the soul. It is the second of four aspects of prayer in the ACTS model of prayer (Adoration, Confession, Thanks, Supplication). In the Christian mindset, to confess is to admit your faults and sins to God in order to reconcile with Him and receive forgiveness for them, with the expectation that grace is freely offered to the penitent soul.
I always had mixed feelings about confession. Sometimes I felt the need to confess things that I knew were "wrong" but I did not feel guilty for them, and then I felt the need to confess that I did not feel guilty in an effort to make up for my inability to come to confession with the proper remorse. At other times, it felt good to confess things, to discuss them with God and describe how I felt about what I had done and why I had done it and what consequences it had had so far and how I hoped to act differently in the future. It gave me a space for contemplation of my character and my deeds as well as a chance to feel that I had been given a fresh start and that I could learn from the experience.
In a world without prayer, I wonder whether there is a role for confession to play in my life. While I no longer try to feel guilty for things and I do not believe that my actions offend or grieve any deity, I think there may be some redeeming value in time spent considering one's actions with a similar mindset. It seems valuable to spend time concentrating on becoming a more honourable person.
I have been thinking of some things that could serve in place of prayer if one wished to redeem the concept of confession in a secular world:
1. Journalling: Such writing affords me the opportunity to consider my actions in a private space but in a more formal manner than mere pondering or daydreaming would. Writing takes time and consideration, and it can be re-read for further perusal. Over time, I can observe how my actions and opinions have changed, and this may lend a feeling of renewal that my former feelings of receiving forgiveness once gave me. It can also be pursued in a solitary daily manner, just as I once pursued the practice of prayer.
2. Counselling: Discussing my personal life with a counsellor allows me to gain a new perspective in a closed secure space. This relationship may be quite similar to that which I formerly had with mentors and/or accountability partners in my Christian life.
3. Discussion with friends: This is probably largely a female thing, but I find that when I discuss events with my female friends in earnest, we examine how we felt and why we did what we did. What is this but communal confession? If we did something wrong, we examine why we did so and how we could avoid flying off the handle in the future and what may or may not result from our actions. It is sometimes debated whether our over-analysis of events is a virtue or a fault, but this is one of the things that I enjoyed most about confession—I had a chance to be brutally honest about what I did and why without offering excuses. This is not to say that I always discuss things without justifying them, but certainly there are people with whom I am willing to show the less-than-stellar parts of my character.
One of the concepts that I linked to confession when I was Christian was the idea that there was an Ideal Self to which I should aspire. My reasoning was that God knew me so completely that He would know what I would be like without the corrupting influence of sin. I also reasoned that while God had redeemed me in my present state, it was because He loved what I could be in my Ideal state and wanted to give me a chance to become closer to that in reality. This led, of course, to a sort of moral perfectionism to which I never quite measured up. While I would like to abandon that part of it, I would still like to think that I can improve on my current character. Perhaps a secular version of confession would be helpful.
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