Penance for Evangelicals. Just as a note, I also posted this baby on my other blogspot: theologywhiplash.blogspot.com
I became
aware of the idea of “penance” when I was studying for my 4 year degree. I was
in a religion course that made good Evangelicals, like me, aware of other
theological systems in Christianity. The idea of penance was almost laughable
to me then; I thought of it as
trying to earn forgiveness for sins. Every good Evangelical knows that
is a stain upon the gospel. Jesus doesn’t require our good works in order to
forgive us. Think “Thief on the cross.”
I was very
unaware of how little I knew or understood, much less appreciated, theological
reflection. I knew the right answers, and they came quick and easy. Such is the
life of an inexperienced 19 year old. I thought penance was an old and stupid
idea for people who weren’t satisfied with the Gospel truth that Jesus died for
all sin, once and for all, and invites all humanity into a relationship with
Him; forgiving all sins for those who accept it.
Little did I
know, one day I would be pastoring a church. And when you pastor a church,
certain truths are not so easy to dismiss or glaze over. To tell the truth, I
now firmly believe in penance as a regular spiritual practice for those who
have accepted the Gospel.
So what is penance? Is it really trying to
earn salvation?
No.
Actually, penance has less to do with earning what God is offering to us, and
more to do with us accepting what is already there. In its proper place, penance allows us to stop
wrestling with our sin, and start wrestling with our forgiveness. It
usually is a task given to us by an ecclesial authority, formal or informal. It
could be anything from saying prayers, or fasting, or a pilgrimage, or even
completing some manual labor that benefits others. The tasks are supposed to be
helpful, but mostly they are supposed to give us time to meditate on—and work
out—this incredibly great forgiveness and life in Christ that we have been
given.
A vignette of penance in the modern
evangelical church.
A guy I know
and love struggles with sexual addiction. I can tell you that any addiction,
but sexual addiction in particular, is a seriously difficult problem to deal
with on a spiritual level.
The problem with sexual stuff.
Part of the problem
is the root of past sin. My buddy was sexually exploited as a child, and so the
normative sexual appetites a man can expect have been broken. He has never
experienced sexual normalcy. This is not his own failing. Sin has a way of
victimizing people, whether we admit it or not. Furthermore, our culture (more
than our churches, in my opinion) makes sexuality a shameful thing; by
exploiting its intrigue to sell stuff. Our churches say “sex cements” (and they
mean that it’s proper place is to bond people and lives together in the
sacredness of marriage), but our culture says, “sex sells.”
My buddy had
been thrown into a world where he had been sold… yes… but he had been
unwillingly and unwittingly cemented to deep shame and reproach. The work of
being set free by Jesus Christ is just that: work. And while I do believe we should shy away from any boasting
that salvation can be earned; I think we, the evangelical church, have
forgotten to work that salvation out.
And so,
sadly, my buddy got virtually no help from his Christian community. Pastors
seemed to only have one line, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be
saved.” His response was always, “I believe! But this sin is killing me!” The pastor
could offer no other help. And when my buddy’s sin problem became an embarrassment
to the church, he stopped receiving even that one line. Pastors seemed to say
to him, “If one time forgiveness doesn’t work, you got to change. If you can’t
change, then you need better help than I can give. Here’s the number to a good
counselor that I know.” No offense to all my friends in the world of counseling
and psycho-analytics; but I think we pastors have forgotten an age old pastoral
tradition: penance.
So I invited
my buddy on a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is simple, you just walk with each other
all day, for days on end. I asked each participant (Wait. No. no. Let’s call
them “pilgrims,” shall we?) to identify spiritual goals that God was inviting
them too. The goals were different for each pilgrim. One wanted to find God’s
peace, another wanted to find spiritual strength, a non-Christian came to see
what Christians were like while walking together, and of course, one man wanted
to be set free from his sexual addiction.
And so we
started each day with a meditation on Psalm 1, and Genesis 15. Then we walked,
and walked and walked. We ended each day with a small fire, and another
meditation. Then we’d get up and do it again. We prayed that every mile would
get us closer to grasping God’s work in our lives, ever step a victorious step
in sanctification, and every mountain an opportunity to struggle towards God.
I spent time
with each pilgrim, as time allowed, praying for them, and talking through
whatever God was doing in their lives.
“Rev.
Shivers just went up my spine. Maybe God is going to set me free. Maybe this
trip is going to allow me to finally lay down this burden.” My buddy said to
me.
“Well, let’s
walk it out. And pray.”
If the story
ended with me telling you that the pilgrimage was a great one-time cure for my
buddy, and that convinced you to try it out; you would be missing the whole
point of this article.
The
miraculous healing we wanted is not what God gave. Penance is never about
manipulating God into doing what we want. But penance, in and of itself, is a
grace that God gives to us to work out our salvation. That pilgrimage, for all
intents and purposes, is the temporal answer to our struggle with God’s great
salvation: Christians walking with each other, praying for each other, encouraging
each other, and trusting God to do the work.
As such, the
evangelical model of penance promotes the very antidote that Jesus established
for serious, addictive, soul-crushing sin: A Christian community that
continually (and oftentimes physically) brings one another to the Great
Regenerator of Humanity—Jesus Christ.
This is how
we get better. We walk it out with one another. The spiritual discipline of
penance demands that the evangelical response to sin is not only, “That’s
between you and God. Pray this prayer and you should be good.” But also, “Welcome
to the inheritance of the saints! You belong here, and your struggle with sin
does not disqualify you. We want to be reconciled to God, which while we still
walk this Earth, is a never ending process we help each other with.”