The tendency in many confessions (public/private; religious/secular) is for the one confessing to tell the amount of truth necessary to convince the audience of a contrite heart without telling too much as to increase one’s chances of being completely marginalized for the sin/violation/transgression under examination. I like how Mark Twain wrote that if “you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said.”

Tiger’s first confession was an example of the former. His second was an example of a profound awareness that perception and reality were as distant as Republicans and Democrats on health care reform. It appears now that his second confession has cleared the landscape for authentic healing.

Confession’s ultimate power is it’s ability to create a community without barriers. When we talk about how great we are, we become competitors. When we talk about the darkness within, we become family (to paraphrase Karl Barth).

U2 calls this, on their newest album, a “Moment of Surrender.” That speaks to me. That makes me want to find someone I trust and get on with the business of confession.

Dr. Semmelweis enters the scene. A rare combination of brilliance and compassion, this doctor compared the death rates of mothers/infants in General Hospital with that of midwives outside of the hospital. He found that a mother/baby was 2x more likely to die in his hospital than outside.

After months of research he came to the conclusion that the answer was right in front of him. These women were dying of the mystery fever that was not contagious (doctors didn’t die) nor was it circulating in the broader community (mid-wives were highly successful). The mystery fever was the result of doctors coming straight from autopsy labs (researching the dead bodies of mothers and infants) into the maternity wards without thoroughly washing their hands.

It would take several years before “germ theory” gained respect in the medical community (ala two other big questions: Is the world round or flat? Does the sun revolve around the earth or the earth around the sun?). In the first year at General Hospital, this doctor’s discovery saved 300 mothers and 250 babies alone. That’s in just one hospital.

Unfortunately, Semmelweis a) wasn’t taken seriously in the broader medical community,  b)was tricked into entering a sanatorium where he died at a fairly young age.

Sometimes we are the enemy. A new year is upon us. A new decade. May we pursue fixing ourselves as passionately as we pursue fixing everyone and everything else around us.

(NOTE: This is a summary from a story told in SuperFreaknomics, 136ff).

The corporate and individual power of sin consume much of contemplative life.

Bishop Desmond Tutu offers one way to engage the subject of sin in healthy and life-affirming fashion.¹ Bishop Tutu is most known for his appointment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC, by South African icon and leader extraordinaire, Nelson Mandela. An ordained priest, Tutu was able to accomplish in South Africa, in the immediate wake of apartheid’s death and destruction, what some Christian scholars are calling one of the most important Christian contributions of the twentieth century.

Apartheid, simply understood as the legal separation of people based on race and skin color, flourished in South Africa for much of the twentieth century. It was a brutal system employed by a powerful white minority to control a disempowered black majority. “You know you’ve created God in your own image,” writes Anne Lamott, “when God hates all the same people as you.” Tutu’s landmark recollection of the Apartheid Era in South Africa, No Future Without Forgiveness, is loaded with stories that illustrate the injustice and sins committed by humanity against humanity. Stories which feel, look, and sound eerily similar to the racism/classism/sexism (and all other “isms” that plagues us in the United States even to this day).

When God accosted Adam and remonstrated with him about contravening the order God had given about not        eating a certain fruit, Adam had been less than forthcoming in accepting responsibility and disobedience. No, he shifted the blame to Eve, and when God turned to Eve, she too had taken a leaf from her husband’s book (not the leaf with which she tried ineffectually to hide her nakedness) and tried to pass the buck. We are not told how the serpent responded to the blame pushed on it. So we should thus not have been surprised at how reluctant most people were to acknowledge their responsibility for the atrocities done under apartheid. They were just being descendants of their forebears and behaving true to form in being in the denial mode or blaming everyone and everything except themselves. Yes, it was all in our genes. “They” were to blame. There we go again, showing ourselves as true descendants of our first parents.

We are all guilty. We are all sick. We have all broken relationship with fellow humans and with God. Our sins desperately need naming. We desperately need forgiving.

Humans all too easily become the very thing we claim to be against. Our fear and anger in relation to the monster often acts as a catalyst in causing us to become monsters ourselves. As Bishop Peter Storey, another survivor of South African apartheid, reminds us, “One of the tragedies of life, sir, is it is possible to become like that which we hate most . . . .”

I believe the only hope for me, the church, and humanity, is the language of sin and the power of forgiveness.

This is what I believe.

As I made my way down I-40, a large S.U.V. (bad traffic stories usually involve a S.U.V.) swerved off the road, and before I could think one simple thought, I saw a re-tread tire coming, like a boomerang) right for my head. I ducked, swerved off of the highway and ended up 30 feet below in a huge ravine that divided the highway. As I pulled glass out of my face and walked up towards the top of the hill I spotted the projectile that had knocked me off course. It was an almost full tire tread with the metal wires still inside the tire. This thing could have killed me on the spot.

A few moments later, a police officer showed up on the scene. He was a tall, young, heavyset fellow. I’m not saying he ate a lot of donuts, but he sure was eating something. He got me cleaned up pulling more of the glass from my face, ears, scalp, and head. As we sat in the back of his police car (I wasn’t under arrest, I was writing a report so that had something to go on when they finally caught the Semi-truck illegally using re-tread tires on a warming Tennessee summer morning)—he asked nonchalantly, “So where you headed this early in the morning?”

“Headed to church,” I said.
“That’s nice. Real nice.” This was Tennessee after all, not Detroit. Going to church is what socially sophisticated people do. “You know a lady was killed last week in the same kind of accident. You’re lucky.” I didn’t respond.
“What kind of Church?” he asked.
“Oh, a real loving, caring church?” A pause ensued.
“Say, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Are you . . . no . . . any chance . . . are you a preacher?” Here I am still pulling glass out of my face, heart racing, calculating the cost of the damage to the car, wondering who’s going to preach for me, and I could feel an ad hoc counseling session about to take place. I can see these things coming a mile away.
“Well, yes sir, I am. I am a minister. I was on my . . . “He interrupted me before I could finish.
“Man have I had a difficult last five years.” I sank lower in my chair, realizing I wasn’t going anywhere, hoping no one who knew me would drive by in gawking fashion. “My life’s a mess. I’ve really messed things up. I’ve conned friends, cheated family, made my wife so upset, we’re getting divorced next month. Says she’s keeping the kids. My life’s breaking into a million little pieces.”

We chatted for a bit. I assured him that life has a way of giving us second, third, and fourth chances. I gave him my card. We would talk at least one more time that week on the telephone.
Here’s what I wish I would’ve said. If I had a “do-over” (a mulligan for golfers), this is what I’d say.

“Officer, I need a word with you.” I would lock eyes with eyes and I’d say, “I’m going to tell you something that’s truer than you and I sitting in this car this morning. Something more real than the cut marks on my face. If you think that God roots for the perfect, got-it-all-together, pious, BIG ONES of this world, well, you are wrong. You have to get real before God. No more posturing. No more spin-zone. No more hiding. No more deceit. You have to deal with the mirror you try to avoid. Deal with who you really are, not who you want others to think you are. You gotta come to grips with truth, not who you portray yourself to be on the stage of life. Before you can pray ‘I am not who I should be, or who, by the grace of God I will one day become . . .but thank God I’m not the person I used to be.’ Before you can pray that prayer, you have to get painfully transparent. And when you find yourself in that moment, when you feel you are at your lowest, your littlest . . . that’s when you have the space and grace to meet God for the very first time.”

If I had a do-over that’s what I would say.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about a few of the physical scars I carry.

I have two identical scars on my forehead—the result of two completely different events. Some people tell me that if you get close enough, it looks as if I used to have horns growing out of my head. Had I participated in the political drama many Christians fueled, the horns might have come literally true.

One of the scars on my head came from a running accident when I was two. Not being the polished athlete I am today, I ran into the corner of a brick wall.

The other scar is from a time when I was five living in Wichita, Kansas. I was at the mall with my next door neighbor who challenged me to a race. I took off at Michael Phelps type speed, and he decided his best chance to beat me was to trip me from behind. I went falling into a sharp indoor street lamp. The next thing I knew, I was laying in the ER, face-up, staring into a bright light with a doctor holding stitches, analyzing my grill.

I should note that these scars used to be separate. In pictures from adolescence, they are on opposite sides of my forehead. But as I’ve grown older, these two scars have decided they need to be closer. Hence, the horns.

Another scar I am aware of is the one located just beneath my chin. This scar was given to me by one of teammates on my college basketball team. It was innocent enough. We were doing a routine drill when he accidentally elbowed me right beneath the chin. My screen went black. Again, the next thing I knew, Garth Pleasant (the coach) was standing over me as I stared at the ceiling, saying, “Graves, Graves, Graves.” That was the first and last time I’ve ever been knocked out.

I also have a scar on my side that I’ve had since childbirth. You don’t have to be a M.D. to know this is known as a birth-mark. One of the eerie things that happened to me in college was the time I discovered that my roommate and best friend had an identical mark in the exact location. If the Apocalypse was upon us, we surely bore the mark of the beast.

I’m starting to believe that scars are incredibly important in our journey as people of deep spirituality. Not just physical scars we can detect with the eye, but the spiritual scars we carry with us.

For one, scars remind us that we are all fragile people. Even the toughest, macho-men must remember that from dust we came and to dust we shall return. None of us are as invincible as we convince ourselves. We might live a little longer, but the fragility of being human waits each day as we enter into the world.

I will never forget the dramatic reminder of this I received my sophomore year of college. I was in the weight room at Lipscomb University in Nashville. A teammate and I were lifting weights, getting ready for the Big Game the next night. There was only one other person in the weight room—a young athletic girl. We learned later she was a volleyball player. After we left the weight room, she started to feel ill. She went to her dorm room to lie down. During the night she became deathly ill. She died from meningitis. Just like that . . . a young athletic twenty-something dead.

Our scars remind us of our inescapable fragility.

Scars also remind us of a truth that holds the universe together. Some of the events and experiences of our lives are the result of our choices. Yet, some of the events and experiences of our lives are the results of choices other people made. If the statistics are correct, many of the women in our churches have experienced some form of sexual molestation. I realize that’s not taboo to talk about but if we don’t who will?

Scars are also significant, because immediately beneath the scars are the secrets we keep from one another. Underneath the surface, when he dig deeper and become fully transparent: we have to deal with the generational sins that haunt us: alcohol and drug addiction, physical and sexual abuse, pornography, sexual addiction, anorexia and bulimia, lying . . . and the list spreads as far as the veins in the human body (if you doubt . . . check out this site which is closing in on 200 million hits).

I just mentioned personal scars . . . but societal scars can also be detected in all of us: ageism, sexism, racism, classism . . . all of these are part of our experience.

Physical scars . . . spiritual scars . . . going deeper, we’re reminded of the secrets that rage below the surface. These secrets that sit right below the surface of our scars have the potential to destroy us. They are, like skin cancer, absolutely toxic if we do not open ourselves up for treatment.