Psalm 32
Happiness comes from having your rebellion taken away,
from having your failure completely covered.
Happiness comes from YHWH not counting your mistakes,
from having nothing to hide.
As long as I kept my stubborn silence,
my bones grew weak because of my constant complaints.
Day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was sapped by a summer’s heat.
~~Selah~~
Finally I admitted my sin to you, and stopped hiding my guilt.
I said, I confess my rebellion, YHWH,
and you took away the guilt of my sin.
~~Selah~~
That’s why people of faith everywhere should pray to you – they’ll find you.
Even when the flood begins rising, it will never touch them.
You are my hiding place; you’ll protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of freedom.
~~Selah~~
I’ll teach you and show you the way you should walk;
I will counsel you, and keep watch over you.
Be wise! Don’t be like horses and mules,
who need to be harnessed with bit and bridle before they’ll come to you.
Wrongdoers are prone to many sorrows,
but those who trust in YHWH are surrounded with unfailing love.
Here, scripture tells us all of the blessings that confession brings to us. Forgiveness and grace, which we usually think of God doing for us after we confess, and yes, this is so important. But it also brings blessings we don’t normally associate with the practice of confession. Psalm 32 tells us that it brings God’s wisdom, guidance, and unfailing love. It surrounds us with songs of freedom, (now there’s an image to meditate on!) as evil can find no bond of sin to tie us down with. The psalm tells us that confession provides God’s protection.
Below, I write about how negative beings try to claim so-called “legal rights” over us. Unforgiven sins are an easy way for these beings to gain a foothold onto our being. But when our sins are forgiven they can’t be used against us, and this is one way that confession brings both freedom and protection.
Most are familiar with the straightforward confession of our sins. Most of us are also taught to confess the sins we aren’t aware of. However, there are other aspects of confession that we rarely consider, aspects that can bring tremendous benefits into our lives if we practice them.
The ancient Hebrews had about 22 different words for sin in the Old Testament, each a slightly different type of sin. Sin, which means “error” in Greek, comes in many forms that aren’t the usual straight-out wrongdoings that we usually think of as sin. According to the Old Testament, sin can include failures beyond our control, unintentional mistakes, lapses in judgment, forgetting to do something, accidents, imperfections, etc.
An example, perhaps you were bullied as a child over some insignificant aspect of yourself that bullies latched on to. Maybe it was because you were short. Maybe you had green eyes. Common sense says that you are innocent, you’re not guilty of any wrong, and that’s true. However, as an adult that memory can come up over and over again, bringing back the sting of shame. You can still feel there is something “wrong” about you or something you did, a fault that made you a “legitimate” target for bullies. This is something our charismatic friends would compare to demons having “legal rights.”
Hmm, isn’t it interesting how human bullies act the same way?
These bullies managed to plant a little seed of shame in you, whether you deserved it or not. We usually try to hide this shame, keep it in the darkness, and therefore, it becomes stuck. Logically you know you did nothing wrong, but emotionally you still feel shame, humiliation, and even, although you are innocent, guilt. This is perfect for confession, to confess to God your faults in the situation, the original “sin” the bullies picked on, perhaps guilt over feeling you couldn’t stand up to the bullies, anger that no one stepped in to defend you, the anger you still feel towards the bullies, even anger at God for not protecting you. You can ask God for help with forgiving yourself and others in the situation. Ask God to forgive you.
This same principle applies to all injustices that create a feeling of shame in innocent people; rape, child molestation and abuse, victims of fraud, etc.
When we confess this sting of shame to God, what we do in the spiritual world is to open up a stuck memory with all its stuck emotions and bring them into the light of God. We’ve opened ourselves up not only to God’s forgiveness, but remember God is a parent and you are God’s beloved child. God wants to and will heal your pain, remove the burden of shame and cover it with protection. God will hold you close in love, grace, and mercy.
Every human is a sinner, everyone, even the best person you know, there are no exceptions here. Sin is a part of our daily lives. It’s looking at someone’s car and wishing you had one like that. It’s forgetting to fill the pet’s water bowl before you left for work. It’s buying more food than you need and then having to throw it out. It’s being judgemental about the way other people dress or think. In my mind it’s buying things in plastic that I know won’t be recycled, contributing to the destruction of our planet, the beautiful home God gave us. And yet I do this all the time. I am knowingly a repeat sinner.
In this way, our ancestors were also inevitably sinners, and we read in Deuteronomy 5:9: “for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me”
This sounds so harsh, but we often overlook what follows:
“but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
So God considers the inequity (but also the good!) back to the 4th generation, that’s 30 ancestors. However, God considers the good and not the bad of 1,000 generations of our ancestors. At the 40th generation, we’re already at over two trillion ancestors! Check out the chart here: https://eogn.com/page-18080/10740518. God is setting us up for success!
However, we still have the unforgiven sins of 30 people to deal with. Leviticus 26:40 tells us that God wants us to confess both our sins and the sins of our ancestors, and we will be forgiven. This is where things can become difficult, and people can get stuck. We ourselves may have been the victims of our ancestors’ sins, such as what happens with alcoholism, child abuse, drug addiction etc. It may involve things that are difficult to look at because they are loaded with unresolved emotions. It may have led to inherited trauma for some of our neighbors. Things like slavery, taking the land from indigenous peoples, and genocide, have consequences that ripple down the generations of the victims.
Admitting that our ancestors have done wrong can be painful and challenging. But remember that there is no nation without blood on its hands. Scandinavians, now held up by many to excel in justice, were once the Vikings, who spent centuries murdering, raping, pillaging, kidnapping people, and selling them into slavery. Indigenous tribes attacked and massacred each other. Research any group of people and you’ll find histories of violence and injustice. To be human is to be broken people living in a broken world. We love, honor, and pray for our ancestors, it is through them that God gave us life. But be careful not to turn them into idols and worship them. They were/are sinners just like everyone else.
If you were the victim of your ancestor’s sins, say they physically or sexually abused you, then you’ve inherited not only the pain they’ve inflicted upon you, but also the sin they committed. Asking for forgiveness for their sins might be difficult, perhaps even impossible to honestly do. This is understandable, and God knows and accepts that for us flawed human beings, honestly forgiving someone in our hearts is something we can struggle with and fail. Failing is ok, as long as we have an intention to forgive and we pray to God to help us to forgive. In this case, it may be helpful to think of sin as knots, knots in your life that tie you down and keep you back from enjoying your life.
You’ve inherited a double knot. Mother Mary Undoer of Knots may be a good image for you to pray with, even if your not Catholic. She is a reminder that every forgiven sin unties a knot in your life, opening up your future and granting you the freedom to enjoy your life. If your ancestor is unrepentant God may not forgive your ancestor, but if you forgive them or at least honestly try to (which doesn’t mean you have to like them or allow them into your life,) acknowledge to God that they sinned, and pray for God to forgive them, then you’ve done what God wants you to do and your ancestor’s sin has no hold over you.
Restitution is another point that some people get hung up on. Remember that God intends restitution to be reasonable. God doesn’t want us to destroy our lives in order to make restitution. It may be something as simple as a small monthly donation to a non-profit. It may be a heartfelt apology to people long dead and a promise to try to do better. Pray about it to find what you feel is what God wants you to do.
Unforgiven ancestral sin can even make us feel as if we are haunted and dodged by misfortune. A man from my congregation once came to me about his deceased grandfather, who had committed a serious crime. He said that he and his family felt haunted, and now his own children were reporting strange and frightening things happening to them. A retired senior pastor from our church was willing to meet with the family to work through a process of confession, forgiveness, restitution, and the “haunting” went away.
You may be surprised to find out how much this process can change the quality of your life for the better. Like a dingy, dark room that has the cobwebs swept away, the windows cleaned and a new coat of paint, your life becomes brighter, fresher, and sweeter. You may feel the increased presence of your positive, loving, caring ancestors too, supporting and blessing you. I heartily recommend engaging in a lifelong practice of confession, it’s probably the easiest, cheapest way to improve your life in so many unexpected ways. Another thing to think about is that ancestral sin will affect your children and your children’s children. Having a regular practice of confession and living a faithful life as best as you are able will help to set your descendants up for happiness and success down through the generations.
There is another aspect of confession and forgiveness that we rarely think about, and that is how the unforgiven sins of human beings can affect the land we live on:
The earth dries up and withers,
the world languishes and withers,
the heavens languish with the earth.
The earth is defiled by its people;
they have disobeyed the laws,
violated the statutes (Isaiah 24:4-5)
Do not prostitute your daughter, to cause her to be a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry, and the land become full of wickedness. (Lev 19:29)
These and other verses such as Leviticus 18:25 show that the land given to us in covenant with God to support and house us becomes defiled and polluted by human sin. Physical space, just as with ancestral sin, can be places that feel “haunted.” I think we’ve all been to places that feel dark, dirty, heavy. It seems that the people who commit, perhaps rather serious types of sins, can pass away, the victims of the sin can pass away, and the human memory of these sins can be gone, but somehow, the sins and the pain they caused remain. It’s as if some types of sin take on a metaphysical form of their own, recorded in the memory of our physical surroundings. Sometimes as a pastor I’m called on by people to bless their homes. In doing so I’m sure to ask for forgiveness and healing for all the sins committed by the previous inhabitants of the home and the land.
Since human sin is so ever-present and at the same time so easily suppressed and forgotten, pray to the Holy Spirit to bring whatever is a hidden stumbling block of sin for you up to God’s light of forgiveness. Regular practice of prayerful confession can bring us to a place of deep inner peace, and surround us with protection, even “songs of freedom.” Psalm 51 is the most used psalm for confession:
Oh God, have mercy on me!
Because of your love and your great compassion, wipe away my faults;
wash me clean of my guilt; purify me of my sin.
For I am aware of my faults, and have my sin constantly in mind.
I sinned against you alone, and did what is evil in your sight.
You are just when you pass sentence on me, blameless when you give judgment.
I was born in sin, conceived in sin –
Yet you want truth to live in my innermost being.
Teach me your wisdom!
Purify me with hyssop until I am clean;
wash me until I am purer than new-fallen snow.
Instill some joy and gladness into me; let the bones you have crushed rejoice again.
Turn your face from my sins, and wipe out all my guilt.
O God, create a clean heart in me, put into me a new and steadfast spirit;
do not banish me from your presence, do not deprive me of your holy Spirit!
Be my savior again, renew my joy, keep my spirit steady and willing;
and I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
Save me from bloodshed, O God, God of my salvation –
and my tongue will acclaim your justice.
Open my lips, YHWH, and my mouth will declare your praise.
Sacrifice gives you no pleasure;
were I to present a burnt offering, you would not have it.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
you will not scorn this crushed and broken heart.
Make Zion prosper through your favor;
and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
Then there will be proper sacrifice to please you —
Burnt offerings and whole oblations, and young bulls to be offered on your altar.
(Inclusive Version)