Diary

Yesterday the church service was led by a student minister.
It may have been the first time he'd led the service; he's a sweet man, very committed, very sincere, very knowledgeable, and I like him a lot.
He's also very shy. He's making very courageous attempts to overcome this; and maybe it was because the business of taking a service scared him that he took refuge in the traditional forms he is most familiar with.
So we found ourselves confessing our sins.
Something completely absent from the normal run of services.
And with good reason.
I could not help being struck by how utterly useless it was.
My awareness of this is probably sharpened by an awareness of having lived all my life under a shadow of guilt and shame.
Which did nothing for me.
Which didn't even motivate me to improve my lot.
And listening on Sunday I was struck by how little help such notions are.
Or the one that Jesus somehow 'redeems' us in our sinful state.
The thing that is profoundly dismaying is that such nonsense underpins so many of our ideas of child-rearing; and our systems of so called 'justice'.
There is so much work to be done...

Labels: uslessness of the idea of sin