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ah well a prob here is that we are discussing two diff kinds of confession, Catholic and Christian, and i guess i don't really get this "confess your sins to God," where is that?
It is a bit difficult to find and when we do find something what is it that meant by God that we should do?
yes--so far i've found "profess, throw or cast, thanksgiving" and "to speak the same or to agree," and i am not even looking hard. "Admit"--the way we use it now--seems closest to the last one i guess
I remember only too well when I severely hurt a young German girl with my words during the year I spent as a student in West Berlin [1969-1970]. It always bothered me but later when God called me to Him [1976] I needed to resolve the issue within myself. I lived in California and had no way to communicate with the girl who was not from West Berlin, but from some unknown place in West Germany. Too much time and distance between us and no way to establish communication.
"repentance" is not even a very accurate translation of the term imo, it is basically redefining "Talents" all over again.
The way we commonly use as it relates to our walk with God is to "Confess (admit) guilt". To simply confess something may no more than a declaration of opinion or fact as opposed to an admission of guilt, but the guilt part is what we are wanting to understand.
sure, that can be the case, but i am detecting a lot of "confession" going on where no sin has occurred, and tbh i would even probe you some more to see if you just maybe did not quite accept that all of your past sins were forgiven when you accepted Christ, maybe? Why not?
as you have just illustrated it is easy to retain guilt even after one has been forgiven, and i guess we are all fam with someone who suffers from crushing loads of "guilt" but has committed no sin, too; and they generally "confess" guilt all over the place. So imo it is the "forgiveness" part that needs to be understood. Pointing out guilt will not help a hypocrite anyway imo, no matter how nicely you put it. At least not in my experience.
I believe I understood that for some things which I had not considered or remembered might later require repentance. In time that became even more clear to me. I cannot speak for anyone else, of course. My own perspective on many such things surely had changed since 1976.
What I did was laugh when it was no laughing matter. I was with a friend and I did it without thought and of course he joined in with me. Part of the difficulty is that my last memory of her is of her running away from the bus we were on crying, the tears streaming down her face. The memory still bothers me when I consider it as I am doing now, but generally speaking it does not eat at me any more as it once did.
No doubt confessing to a priest in a dark closet could have been easier than saying "I'm sorry" to the actual victim. But when my cited experience occurred while I was still nominally a Catholic, I had not been to a confessional in about 10 years. Neither have I been to one since that time.
When we were kids in the pre-Vatican era, the manner of teaching catechesis was still developing. Jesus did not condemn repetitious prayer, He condemned the vanity. Repetitious prayer is analogous to an orchestra to a play, and the actions we are to focus on is the main events of the Bible, condensed to 20. While the "music" is playing we visualize being present at the birth, life, death, resurrection and other biblical events. The Rosary is not primarily about Mary, it's a Bible study. We don't *need* rosaries, fingers work just as well. Praising Jesus (...blessed is the the fruit of your womb, Jesus..) and mocking the rosary is done out of ignorance "...for they know not what they do". There are Protestants who recite the Rosary. The capacity for abstract thinking usually develops between the ages of 10-14.
James 5 talks about 2 different sacraments. Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick. It used to be called "Extreme Unction" because it was usually administered when you faced death. Protestant pastors will follow James 5 and anoint their sick members on hospital rounds so praying over the sick with oil is not foreign to some Protestants. If you look at James 5 carefully, a person can have their sins forgiven even when unconscious. Oh those wacky Catholics!!!
We can and should confess our sins directly to God. That works just fine. For Catholics confessing to a priest is mandatory once a year, and upon committing a mortal sin. It's not a matter of following rules, it's a matter of conscience. Once a month is suggested because it leads to spiritual maturity and holiness. All Christians should take a periodic honest moral inventory of ourselves. or we risk remaining a spiritual infant.
Quote it then please, or see that you are just making sh-t up
then may i ask why you are here, and not on a Catholic site? Do you just enjoy hearing that your beliefs are unScriptural or something? I would be careful about mistaking forgiveness and tolerance for acceptance, especially while you are holding that gun, ok. God will not be mocked kepha
