Unconfessed Life and Literature Part 5: Contempt for Confession

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confession, French Revolution, King David, morality, sexual sin

I am a witness to the final death throes of the shift from modernity to post-modernity as it relates to the abominable acts of a love that dare not speak its name as Wilde phrased it. In The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative, Robert Bauman describes a life out of control, “It is pointless to deny the truth. I was guilty of criminal conduct…and far worse, I must accept responsibility for betraying my wife, our marriage vows, and dishonoring my family. I compromised my religious beliefs and my personal honor.”

Bauman instinctively knew that whatever force drove him, this uncleanness of spirit over which I seemed to have no control,”  …was evil.. After being caught in the act with an underage boy, he sought help. Instead of healing, he was encouraged to override guilt and the natural conscience^[1] of what we can’t not know, what is biblically known as the “searing of the conscience.”^[2]

In his book, What We Can’t Not Know, J. Budziszewski, author of The Revenge of Conscience, calls for a return to moral sanity. We are now in a period in which things that most people know intuitively are treated with contempt. The indecent or vulgar is paraded as normal.

He states, “I believe, not just from theory but from experience, that to be confused about such fundamental things [moral truth], one must deeply want to be…” Budziszewski admits that none of us can live up to moral truth, for we are all sinners. The argument is not between sinners and innocents, but between sinners who confess the moral facts which accuse all, and sinners who deny them.

Bauman and many others, learned to “deny” that anything was wrong with their behavior, even though, at least in the beginning they could identify it as not only wrong, but unclean. Given time, the conscience is so overrun that it becomes decadent,^[3] taking pleasure in immorality. As Bauman put forth the question, “How could any normal and moral human being do what I did?”

Continue to Part 6

[1] Romans 2:15; Titus 1:15

[2] 1Ti 4:2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;

[3] Rom 1:28 And even as they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

Unconfessed Life and Literature Part 4: To Do or Not to Do, That is the Confession

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confession, French Revolution, King David, morality, sexual sin

Some confessions can only be told in the literary genre of horror such as Frankenstein, Dracula, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Or, in milder terrors such as The Picture of Dorian Grey or Suddenly Last Summer (considered by some as Tennessee Williams most poetic work). But not everyone who suffers is a Shelley, Stoker, or Wilde in need of creating monsters. We are bystanders or victims. Our horror is less cogent, but nonetheless distasteful and unutterable.

Like Hamlet, so grave is our circumstance that action is required in which relationships must be severed if we are to survive. Much out of vogue in modernity, church discipline of the Pauline type is called for, regardless of the pleas to love. For in kindness it can be so that our compassion is wicked.

As Adam Smith observed, “mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” Thus we raise the stake, for to not drive it through the heart of the vampire would be to damn more souls, not less.

Is this why Hamlet, who truly loved Ophelia, could resign himself to such an abrupt ending to the relationship? Was it an act of mercy toward Ophelia…or self-preservation…or both? Isn’t church discipline both an act of mercy in that the transgressor may repent, and an act of keeping the infectious sin from spreading to others?

It is precisely our moral sentiments after all that cause us distress in both the “not doing” and the “doing.” To do or not to do, that is our confession, which in it, we appear mad as the Prince of Denmark.

Unconfessed Life and Literature Part 3: Unconfessed Confessions

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confession, French Revolution, King David, morality, sexual sin

 Not all confessions are equal. Some can be half-baked lacking correct motive, only partly true, or confessed to the wrong people in the wrong venue.

The confessor comes away with a false sense of wholeness for a time. Nevertheless, conscience is the navigator and regardless of the mode of travel, whether in luxury or an old jalopy, the destination remains the same. All men were created equal indeed. Conscience itself is like the plot of a suspense movie in which no matter what alley we chose for the escape, our pursuer is never off the trail. Sophocles cautions, “there is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.”

Conscience, the predecessor of confession is not to be trifled with for it holds the power of life and death. As Voltaire noted “the safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.” Confession in this light becomes an indispensable tool for living, as Scripture attests that “life and death are in the power of the tongue.”

In my own life I have witnessed the non-confession confession and the end is the same as the unconfessed, i.e. death. While one may desire to rid himself or save others of a torturous demon, left unattended by grace – he becomes a demon himself. This was the story of Stoker’s Dracula in which the vampire both desired to be free from making others into the undead and yet at the same time lusted for their damnation. The modern version of this monster is depicted in the Twilight Series in which the vampire is able to overcome his aversion to biting via works and family values, a very Mormon message. The apple offered on the cover of the original Twilight book is a way of asking, “did God really say,” that vampires are sinful?

Continue to Part 4