Sunrise Tantalize

I’ll never truly understand The Atonement and God’s willingness to forgive after confession and repentence. But recently I’ve come much, much closer. I’ve found that forgiveness after confession is rather easy if it is done out of love. However, trust is something that must be gained through the long repentance process. The atonement also gives me the strength to forgive since I know that I make mistakes all the time and I can still be forgiven. How can I deny that to someone I love? Who am I to say, “No, I won’t forgive you” when Christ has died for my and everyone else’s sins?

But gaining trust through repentence takes so much longer and is so much harder. I’ve never thought of sin as a violation of trust, but I do now. I drank alcohol this weekend. (It was a horrible weekend but it was the “reduced harm” option.) God trusted me to keep his commandments and I didn’t. I’ve confessed and repented and I feel like God trusts me again. I can understand why bishops ask people to refrain from taking the sacrament for a while after a serious sin has been committed. They have to gain God’s trust back. Maybe God isn’t sure of if they’re truly sorry. Maybe God is afraid that his trust will be violated again. Maybe Jesus has to give Heavenly Father a nudge and say, “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ve got him covered.”

I’m waiting for Jesus say, “Don’t worry, sunlize. I’ve got him covered. You can trust him again.” But that’s a long way off.

A lot of the LDS-related things I write on Sunrise Tantalize question the LDS Church or point out things I disagree with. However, LDS theology is comforting to me and helps me deal with my depression. Luckily it is May which means my seasonal affective disorder (SAD) symptoms are going away. However, depression follows me around like a rain cloud throughout the year and hovers in the distance in the summer.

First, I like the thought that we will all be perfect against after the Resurrection. I won’t have this anymore. I won’t have to take medicines or use my special sun lamp. I won’t cry over daily stresses. Sometimes I cry about nothing in particular. There were days in February where I would cry all day. But now I can think to myself, all I have to do is make it through this life and some day I won’t have to worry about being depressed anymore. It gives me hope.

Another comfort comes from repentance. For my entire life, even before I was depressed, I would obsessively worry over my mistakes. Or what I perceived as mistakes. For example, when I’m really “not feeling well” (i.e. depressed) I sometimes obsess about an incident in first grade where I spelled grandma as “gramma” because that’s how my mom told me to spell it. I thought I was so clever because no one else in my class could spell grandma. I was so disappointed to find that my teacher spelled it “grandma”. That ‘mistake’ is from 15 years ago. You can just imagine how much I obsess over recent errors. And I can’t stop thoughts like that from coming into my head when I’m upset. I yell at myself, “Sunlize, stop!” as my CBT therapist taught me too. And I can stop the thought from progressing, but I can’t stop future thoughts from entering my head. Fortunately cymbalta seems to help in this area.

Anyhow, while the missionaries taught me about repentance, one of them mentioned that after we truly repent, the atonement allows God to forgive us and forgets our sin. But we don’t forget our mistakes because we need to remember not to repeat them. We don’t need to worry about them or feel guilty, we just need to acknowledge that it happened. This relieves a huge amount of pressure. I can give my guilt up and know that I am forgiven. I don’t need to obsessively worry about past mistakes because I am forgiven. And that makes me feel so relieved.

So I met with the missionaries again today. I’m feeling a bit annoyed that I’ve been switched to a different ward and different missionaries mid-conversion. I was just starting to get used to the old ward and I had met several people. I’d met with those missionaries about six times. Now I have to go to a new ward and I’ll probably meet with the missionaries only 3 or 4 times before I get baptized. The new ward is very close to my parents’ house while my old ward is 20 minutes away. I’ll only be here for another 6 weeks or so before I move. I had been visiting the old ward for 3 weeks. Sigh.

Anyhow, we were talking about the process of confession and something jumped out at me. Why must we confess certain sins to our bishop? Aren’t all of my sins between me and God?

Here are the questions I asked and the answers I got:

• Q: Why should we confess certain sins to the bishop?
• A: Sins that we must confess have to do with either bringing a life into the world or taking one from this world (i.e. creating a baby or murdering someone).
  • Question I didn’t ask - Many violations of the Law of Chastity do not create a child — such as premarital sex when using birth control or masturbation.
• Q: Aren’t all sins between the sinner and God? Can’t forgiveness be granted directly?
• A: Only certain people who hold the priesthood keys can help the repentance process along.
• A: We need to make sure that people who have not repented for certain sins are not allowed in the temple because temples are sacred.
  • Q: Well, people who commit those sins shouldn’t go to the temple.
  • A: That would be nice but some people still go.
  • Q: So if these people still go to the temple even though they have committed a serious sin, wouldn’t they be likely to lie to the bishop?
  • A: (Discussion about discernment.)
  • A: We’ll look it up and get back to you.

Needless to say, these answers weren’t very satisfying. It seems to me that confession to the bishop seems a bit controlling. I understand that the bishop doesn’t grant forgiveness, and sometimes it is helpful to talk to someone about the sin. So if you don’t need forgiveness from the bishop and you think you can deal with it on your own, why go to the bishop? It seems that the Church wants to make sure that certain people (adulterers, murderers, etc) are not part of their church or at least they want to know if members are engaged in devious behavior. I think the confessing-to-the-bishop rule is a rule of man and not of God.

The other thing is that I don’t feel comfortable discussing sexual things with random people. Obviously the bishop doesn’t want you to be specific but I’d have issues with simply saying, “I had sex.” I think whether or not you obey the Law of Chastity is between you and God. It’s no one else’s business.

Some related posts I found: (since I don’t trust wordpress to find related sites)

Grace for Grace post
The law governing confession
Which sins do you confess to the bishop
Confession