eSalvation?

“Half-woken from a dream, I realized the church could start an electronic confessional service, or ePriest. All of your sins are already tracked online, so they already know what you did. After texting you penance instructions, and your pressing 'C' to confirm, you'd be e-mailed indulgence coupons that you can print or swipe from your mobile device to purchase more lapda, uh, sins later.

Jonathan Malone, what do you think?”

This was posted by a friend of mine on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. Because of the Christmas madness and the other pressing responsibilities (I really had to catch up on episodes of “Brooklyn 99”) I did not get to give a good answer….until now The Christmas madness is over, I have watched all the shows that I need to watch, and I’m enjoying the weekend with my in-laws. So now is a perfect time to sneak away and respond to this tongue-in-cheek theological curiosity.

First, let me say that I am glad that my 3+ years of Masters study and 10+ years of doctoral work qualify me for such an important question. I am sure there were many other people that my friend could have tagged via Facebook with such a quandary. Thanks for thinking of me. (The truth is that we were in High School together and I may be the only religious person he knows).

Second, the question is actually a good one that caused me to dust off more than one tome of theological import. Let’s start with the idea that all of our sins are tracked online. I wonder if such a notion would make the presence and purpose of such an app obsolete. If we knew that we were being tracked specifically to keep tally of all of the “bad” or taboo places we went to, things we posted, etc., would not that be enough of a deterrent? I think of Foucault’s Panopticon (via Bentham); the idea of a prison where everyone is watched, or at least believes that they are being watched all the time. Yet we already live in a world of surveillance and we still try to get away with things. We have cookies tracking our actions, browser history letting our spouses and parents know where we have been, and the NSA is no doubt documenting our every keystroke. I’m even told there is some fat man in the North Pole who sees me when I am sleeping and when I am awake. Even with all the surveillance that already exists the majority of the human race, when online, will still try to get away with, sneak, or do something suspect and act as if no one is the wiser. If you don’t believe me I then I have one word for you – porn.

It may be a sad statement on humanity that even the notion of an omnipresent, omniscient God who sees and knows even more than the fat man of the North Pole does not keep us from making bad decisions from time to time to time. So I think my friend is right that we need something for confession because we are going to “sin.”

Yet I wonder about an ePriest that already knows everything you did and just passes out the penance as if it were a tax. Part of the sacrament of the confession is the individual confessing, fessing up, admitting, and embracing the truth. If this is done with a priest or, in my tradition, directly with God via prayer, it is important for the individual to name what he or she believes he or she has done. Not everything we may consider to be a sin is actually sinful (free reign on eating chocolate!), and not everything we consider to be ok actually is (so back off the chocolate!). Add to this the notion of sin as a break in one’s relationship with God, i.e. not doing what God would like to do. The act of penance is to rebuild/regain your relationship with God. So if such an app were to exist it would need to be open ended where the user would have to speak or type in the sins that he or she feels moved to confess.

Third, the notion of indulgences is something that is a bit outside of my tradition. We focus on grace (as given by God) over works (as done by people), meaning you do not need to get a coupon to validate your various transgressions each time you commit them. You only need to accept the actions on the cross once and you are forgiven your sins for all time. That is a serious deal! Those in the more confessional tradition will agree with the grace but probably argue that you need the confession and the assurance of forgiveness (i.e. indulgence) for the sins you continue to commit as you grow in your faith. I agree with such a sentiment, only I would turn again and again to the universal grace of the cross as the indulgence. It is important to confess and to work to be better, but in the end we cannot mete out forgiveness on a mobile device.

In summary, the act of confession (in prayer or in the booth) is a good thing to do. The reminder of forgiveness is a good thing to have. We probably don’t need an ePriest to make it all happen (I haven’t even gotten into the importance of human interaction and real-time ritual).

All that said if my friend is considering creating such a device/application and is looking for the endorsement of said device from a clergy then I am sure there is a way we can make it work. Call me!

Good Sin / Bad Sin

I had to take a break from reading Freud – he was driving me crazy! (ha?) So I decided to turn to the easy read of Michel Foucault, specifically Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. I’m only two chapters into it so far so I can’t really offer a full response/reaction to Foucault’s work, but so far I am enjoying the book and I don’t think I’m crazy (I’ll have to go back to Freud to see if that is the case).

While reading Foucault’s work I am keeping in the back of my mind the notion of sin in Christianity and how the way sin has been and continues to be used in areas of discipline and punishment. I am curious to see if there are points of correlation or similarity between the discipline and punishment that Foucault outlines and practices of Christianity. I haven’t done any digging to see if anyone else has considered such an approach to sin, mostly because I don’t want to add more things to my reading list right and because I am lazy.

Such an approach to sin is important because Christians and churches have a wonderful history of manipulation and shame around theological terms and ideas. The Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter is one of the many works of literature that look at shame in a faith-based society and there are a bevy of others (the 2009 German film The White Ribbon [Das Weisse Band] is another great example). Sin is a construct that has been used and continues to be used to control people, to silence people, to overpower people, and to take away people’s freedom. Various notions of sin continue to be used to demean, dehumanize, and destroy individuals. This is not good… maybe even sinful.

There are those who have excised the word (and notion?) “sin” from their general lexicon. Maybe you attend a softer, gentler church that offers a softer, gentler Christianity and would say that such practices around notions of sin are not a part of your faith experience. Perhaps. Maybe you go to a church/faith community where the notion of sin is never brought up. In your community it may be a sin to talk about sin or to even mention the word “sin.” So the whole question of how sin works in your faith community is moot, right? We don’t need to worry bout that idea and word any more.

Yet I bet ideas of shame and guilt and doing “bad things” are a part of your community. I bet your community comes out of a history that at one time or another did practice naming and dealing with notions of sin in a very public way and those practices may still be a part of who you are. I bet there are people in your softer, gentler community who struggle with shame and guilt and cannot discern where God and Jesus might fit in that picture. I would argue that the construct and concept of sin, whatever that may be, is still a part of your community even if you are tying to hide or ignore it. It is under the rug, but still very much present.

I think we need to keep the notion of “sin” and even the word “sin,” alive in our language, devotion, and practice (that’s right, we need to sin… or maybe I’m talking about acts of penance and cries for forgiveness that come out of an understanding of sin). There are times when we do sin (again, whatever that means). There are times when we fail as individuals or as a community or as a society. There are times when we need to name what we have done as a sin. We may say that we messed up, or that we didn’t do what we hoped to do, but will we say that our actions negatively effected our relationship with God as well as our relationships with others? Are we willing to say that we have sinned?

I think it is important to have a grasp of the word and concept of sin. I think it is important to be able to name brokenness, but we need to do it in a way that does not break or dehumanize the individual. If we are to continue to address sin in the lives of individuals as well as the actions of institutions we need to do it in a way that is humane and compassionate. Churches are human institutions and are prone to sin just as much as any other institution or human. So we need to be vigilant that our churches do not bully and beat people with manipulated ideas of perfection and piety all cloaked around the notion of sin.

If Foucault can’t help me with this, then who can?