Haunted Words: Honesty - Part 1

There are a few sentences that I have heard in my lifetime that still haunt me.

Some haunt because they were incredibly sad. Some, because they were deeply painful. Some, because they were true, too true.

Too true?

Yes, too true. The type of truth that makes you feel seen but also silently recoil and say, “You can’t say stuff like that”. Inwardly, part of you leaps because it is amazing that someone has put words to something you feel too. But it is too true, too honest, too vulnerable.

What is that true sentence that still haunts me? Let me give you a little background first.

Band of Brothers

It was 2020, the year of Covid. Like many, isolation had gripped my daily rhythms. Working from home, working out, and playing video games filled my days. What comes with isolation?

Sin.

In the isolation, God granted me a lifeline. Community.

A band of brothers who risked the necessary part of healing together, honesty. We began to share our stories, struggles, and prayers with one another. It was beautiful. A small corner of heaven in sin-stricken earth.

We would send black and white images of war medics as our mantra. As reminders of what we were about.

Our group was the medic tent of war with sin. A place of healing, but that healing would require vulnerability to show your wounds and scars so that you could receive the healing necessary.

After a few months of this band of brothers, one of the group members, being pressed to share more vulnerably, finally did. And on that rainy evening, I heard the words that still haunt me from time to time. My memory forgets the exact words, but it went something like this:

I feel like I can’t repent with you guys. You all come in here, repent of sins in the past, tie everything up with a neat bow. You have a resolution for your sin problems when you speak. You’ve figured it out, I guess. But me? I feel ashamed because I haven’t figured it out. I’m still struggling. I feel bad for my sin, but I have no neat bow to tie on my repentance. I desire my sin. I want to want to hate it. My sins are not in the past, they are in the now. What am I to do?

I was stunned. I felt every word he was saying, and yet part of me flinched. That’s too honest. Too raw. Too real. Too piercing.

But when your arm has been blown off in war, you don’t sugarcoat your dilemma to the medic. You enter the medical tent with blood spewing everywhere and scream in pain. No neat conclusions. Just pain and a desire for healing.

Maybe my friend was the most faithful that night out of the group.

Messy Repentance Requires Visceral Honesty

Was I doing everything that guy was saying? “Repenting” of sin with cheap platitudes, spiritual language I had learned to lessen the reality of how broken my heart truly was? Did I ever say truly honest things, without some spiritual refrain to soften the blow or make me look better than I truly was?

Did I ever speak honestly?:

• I want to repent of sin this past week, but if I am honest, I still desire sin.

• I don’t want to confess my sin to you all today.

• I was shocked this week at how my heart leaped over barriers to find its satisfaction in things other than Jesus.

• I felt the spurring of the Spirit to leave a certain situation, and I said I don’t care and stayed and sinned.

No, my “repentance” wasn’t quite that real. It was more like pretend repentance.

As I look back, I really do think I was sorry for my sin. I wanted to change. I wanted to be honest. But I said things like:

• I have struggled this week. (No depth of substance)

• I sinned this past week, but I prayed, read Psalm 51, repented, and am walking towards faithfulness now. (No follow up needed, no piercing questions, I had “figured it out”)

• Please pray for me. (Vague)

Those sentences might not seem that bad to you, but they had the appearance of honesty in public; in my heart, I knew they were not deeply honest. They were a type of pseudo-repentance.

And they damaged me and others.

As the leader, they damaged the way I was teaching this group to repent. It sounded spiritual and mature, but it was doing exactly what my friend put his finger on. Making it seem like you could only repent after you had “figured out” your sin problem and found some solution and words for it. It offered no space for “in the moment” processing. It offered no room for simply struggling.

You weren’t coming into the medical tent without an arm; you were coming in with a bandage on the infected wound. It looked better. But bandages don’t heal infections; they mask them.

And as I reflect, I do that a lot in my life, use words to hide. I place a high value on how I speak and how I come across. I like to think things through and have the exact, precise phrasing for what I want to communicate.

That has its pros, for sure.

But it has a rough back edge.

Because you can hide behind well-crafted words. You can use them as a way to isolate. You can protect yourself from the type of honesty repentance requires in post-mortem reflection of sin. Rather than exposing the wounds as they are, I use words and well-thought-out phrases to distance myself from others.

Safe vs Comfortable

It may feel safe to be vague or neat in your repentance. But what we mean by safe is comfortable. It is comfortable to say to our friends, “I am struggling, please pray.” It is comfortable to say, “I sinned, but I prayed and am fighting this week”.

Comfortable, but not safe.

It is actually damaging to yourself and others.

Because you are showing scars, not wounds. Scars are already “healed”. It is not as vulnerable to share scars. But wounds? Oh man. Wounds are scary. Wounds are in process. Wounds are not all figured out.

What would it look like to share with my friends: “I saw in myself this week a deep desire for X and Y, and it scared me.” And then to not tie some spiritual bow on the end. But to keep it open for their response?

Scary.

Necessary.

The visceral honesty needed for true repentance.

Honesty Leads to Healing

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, Jesus said. But the sick. (Mark 2:17)

One implication of those words from Jesus is this: Healing in Christ can be found from sin. But it only comes from total honesty with Him and others.

The beautiful truth is we have a God who does not recoil at our true state as strugglers, but already knows. And in His invitation to honesty is a promise of healing. It is almost as if Jesus is saying, expose who you really are, that is the only way I can heal you.

Within that phrase is the double truth.

Jesus always accepts us as we are in love, but He loves us too much to keep us there.

This truth allows us to risk the honesty required for healing. Who are you honest with?

-Josh