LISTENING WITH OUR HEARTS

“I told my class that I was moving away this morning, and then I started to cry. I didn’t think I would, but I did.”

My daughter, who is thirteen years old, had a rough morning yesterday. Not only did she announce to her class that she will be moving away soon, but also that when we come back she will attend a different school.

Her announcement evoked the sorrows of moving and making friends only to leave them behind. She's also figured out that when we return to Brazil her older brother will remain in the States, and just thinking about that brings more tears.

Monica and I are a lot alike, not just in looks but even in our personalities. I told her that I could relate to her emotions from voicing something out loud. It just makes it feel more real to me. I discovered this especially when I was a pastor and had to read texts of Scripture out loud. Good Friday was nearly impossible to get through without my emotions flooding over me.

I suppose this should not have been a surprise. As a teacher I would always tell students to read out loud what they write in the editing process, because their ears will catch mistakes that their eyes miss. But maybe it’s not just our ears that catch things when we speak them out loud, maybe our hearts do as well.

Curious Silence

In ancient times most people would read things out loud. Augustine, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, recalls the curiosity he had about his bishop, Ambrose, who had this odd habit of reading silently to himself. I don’t wish to return to Augustine’s world of crowds talking out loud to themselves in public places, but I wonder if we read, talk, and especially pray in silence too much.

A friend of mine once served as a pastor at a Korean-American church in the suburbs of Chicago. I joined one of their small group meetings and when it was time for prayer they all took requests, which was familiar to me. And then they all started praying. At the same time. Out loud.

Instead of the usual awkward silence of waiting for someone to take a turn, there was an awkward chorus of petitions rushing upwards to God. At first I could not keep myself from trying to focus on what everyone else was saying, which made it hard for me to say anything at all. But shortly thereafter I found a way to lock onto hearing my voice in what became a harmonious orchestra of prayer.

Since that night as a guest, I’ve found myself voicing out loud my prayers more and more. The verbs for “calling out” and “crying out” in prayer in the Bible point to voicing out loud our heart’s cry. A layer of reality floods over our words when our ears pickup what we are speaking and directs those emotions back to our hearts.

Too often I think we let silence shrink our universe and God’s presence within it. We pray silently to ourselves. We confess our sins silently to ourselves. We become overly familiar with what it is like to confess, but we never feel comfortable matching that confession by speaking our own words of absolution, so we never hear the sweet words, “God forgives you in Jesus Christ.” With all the silence, we start to wonder if God is to be found in any of it.

Life Together

During the Nazi rule of Germany Dietrich Bonhoeffer created an underground seminary. As he anticipated what daily life would look like for this new community of teachers and students, he wrote a little book about it called “Life Together.” In it he covers quiet time alone, working with others, shared ministry, and then devotes the final chapter to confession and communion.

Bonhoeffer found that the quiet practice of individual confession kept his sins in the dark, right where they wanted to stay. He talks about the insecurity of confessing his sins to himself and perhaps merely forgiving himself, which led him to relapse in the same sins over and over again. In private confession he found nothing other than self-deception. He writes:

“And is not the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness? Self-forgiveness can never lead to a breach with sin; this can be accomplished only by the judging and pardoning Word of God itself.

Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God. God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. [. . .]. As the open confession of my sins to a brother insures me against self-deception, so, too, the assurance of forgiveness becomes fully certain to me only when it is spoken by a brother in the name of God” (p. 116).

Habits are hard to break, especially when they trap us in vicious, but familiar-even comfortable-cycles. Imagine the power of hearing your own voice confess your sins out loud to someone? And then the greater power of hearing that someone speak out loud those beautiful words of grace: “God has forgiven you in Jesus Christ!”

The Inner Voice of Shame

The symptoms of this self-deception are all too familiar to me. I beat myself up. I scheme in my head how I can gratify my desires and give in to temptation. And then afterwards I confess my sins to myself and perhaps merely forgive myself as well. Meanwhile everything remains in the dark. If I am not careful I’ll mistake the silent voice in my head for God’s own voice. And it usually won’t include his grace, mercy, or absolution.

Sometimes as a counselor I hear people talk about what God supposedly says to them when they are by themselves in their own minds. And it’s uncanny how that supposed voice of God in their heads sounds almost exactly like the human who is right there in front of me. Self-confession can breed not only self-forgiveness, but also self-inspiration. How could someone distinguish God’s voice from their own without being soaked constantly in the Holy Scripture and God’s community, the church?

Self-deception rarely ends with ourselves. A life without absolution, without forgiveness, without grace erodes compassion and sympathy for others. We begin to see others not as God sees them, but as projections of what we see in ourselves. And instead of being known for our love, we become known for our bitterness – or its twin, cleverness.

Vulnerability is elusive for as many reasons as there are people. I cannot speak for your unique story. I know it’s tough to open up, especially if that’s how you’ve been exploited and hurt in the past, and I don't want to heap another layer of guilt or shame on top of what you are already carrying. Perhaps a first step is to begin saying out loud those sweet words, “God has forgiven me in Jesus Christ.”

Bonhoeffer says that there is danger in brotherly confession, so we must also train ourselves to hear confession rightly, and the only posture is to place ourselves directly at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ, where we are all sinners in need of a great Savior. In other words, we must truly know ourselves and who we are as beloved in Christ.  

The only point of confession to our brothers and sisters, Bonhoeffer says, is to hear God’s forgiveness spoken out loud to us – to let it filter through our ears and pierce our very hearts as a light exposing the darkness therein.

I’m still beginning to know myself, and I am still tempted to keep everything inside. But slowly I am trying to make room to hear God’s voice in the mouths of my brothers and sisters around me.  As Leonard Cohen sings:

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There’s a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.”