>James 5:16 exhorts believers: “confess your sins to each other.” For years, believers followed this teaching, affirming the importance of confession of sins. In the Catholic Church confession of sins is made in private; individuals comes before a priest and privately confess their sins.

In this new century, the church is confronted with something new and different: more and more, confession is being made on the Web and before the whole world. According an article published in Christian Today, more Christians are publicly confessing their sins on the Web.

The following is an excerpt of the article published by Christian Today:

Confessionals in the Catholic Church have seen less foot traffic over the past several decades. Much of that traffic, it seems, has moved to anonymous online confessionals.

DailyConfession.com receives hundreds of anonymous confessions and over 1 million hits each day. The website tells visitors to confess their sins but it doesn’t necessarily provide the peace and the forgiveness that a person would find in the church.

Although it categorises confessions by the 10 commandments, it’s a secular forum. And while some are serious confessions, a lot of confessors reveal “kooky-weird” habits.

Bobby Gruenewald, pastor and innovation leader at LifeChurch.tv – an evangelical multi-site church with an average weekly attendance of 18,000 – believes people keep secrets because they feel no one else could understand why they did what they did.

Gruenewald was part of a team of people at Life Church that launched MySecret.tv – an anonymous confessions website. Originally intended for its church members, MySecret.tv became widely popular outside the church after launching last August and now has about 6,000 confessions.

Although some Christians are critical of the online confessional, with some expressing concern of voyeurism, MySecret.tv encourages online visitors not only to be prayerful when reading other people’s confessions, but to make their own confession a prayer.

This trend reveals that people feel the need to confess their sins. But, instead of finding a
minister or a trusting friend, people are looking for the anonymity the Internet offers. People are desperate for God’s forgiveness and pardon but universal confession on the Internet does not mean that divine forgiveness is assured.

Confession of sins is necessary to our reconciliation with God and with one another. However, an universal audience does not translate into intimacy with God. People cannot just Google forgiveness and find it.

I have a theory why people confess their sins on the Web: I believe people are afraid to approach God and confess their sins. If this is the reason, they should not be afraid, God is there for them. As the Psalmist said:

“I confessed my sins and told them all to the Lord. I said: ‘I’ll tell the Lord each one of my sins.’ Then the Lord forgave me and took away all my guilt” (Psalm 32:5).

Confessing ours sins to God is better than confessing them to the world, because it is only God’s forgiveness that counts.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Confession, Forgiveness