In response to the Fight Clubs book, I recently received an inquiry about a particular sentence I wrote in the introduction:
“I can tell people my sins because my identity doesn’t hang on what they think of me.”
I wrote up a response, which Boundless published on their blog. In it I argue that most people approach others from one of two places, above (strong pride) or below (weak pride). Self-doubt sets us off in search of approval and pride sets us up for applause. We need something to free us from our search of approval and applause in order to confess our sin. Here is an excerpt and you can read the rest here.
When our identity is hung up on what people think of us, it becomes difficult to be honest with them. Some of us approach others from below, fearing their rejection or disapproval. In order to keep their approval intact, we refrain from allowing them to see the real, broken us. We may not lie to them (though we probably do), but we certainly don’t confess our sin to them. Why? Because we treasure their approval more than we treasure Christ.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
This Is Huge - What Frees Us to Confess Sin?
Jonathan Dodson:
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2 comments:
That is basically a Tim Keller quote...I've heard him say that nearly word for word. It is amazing how much Keller is influencing folks and being re-packaged. (Not complaining about that, I just think he deserves to get lots of credit.) Or else this quote is at least an indicator of how a general re-interest in the ongoing role of the gospel is causing to people to think it out along similar lines.
While I am certainly not above pandering to applause, this is not a quote from Keller that I attempted to pass off as my own. I haven't heard him talk about confession and approval/applause, but could imagine that he might use a similar metaphor. To be sure, I have been influenced by Keller, to whom I give lots of credit in my book (see section on the Gospel in Fight Clubs). Perhaps it was a case of "general re-interest" or perhaps it was a result of simply applying the gospel to everyday life. For the record, I wrote stuff like this before I even knew who Keller was, but it doesn't really matter because God gets all the credit. It is his wonderful, gracious way of dealing with broken sinners. The gospel is great, isn't it?!
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