31 October 2011

Sin and Hospital Chaplaincy


Sin and Hospital Chaplaincy - a strange title?  Not from my perspective.

If you were to ask me what are the most important spiritual care tasks I perform, I would have to say that hearing patients' confessions is probably right up there at the top of the list.  Comforting and praying with patients is probably the most requested spiritual care task, but I think that hearing confession is one of the most important.

But isn't confession just for Catholics?  And how can a swingeing theological "liberal" like me hear confession when all I want to talk about is God's love and when I don't want to talk about God's condemnation of sinners?

Well, I'm here to tell you that confession is not just for Catholics.  You'd be surprised the people who want to confess their sins to another, embodied, human being.  Lots of Protestants want to tell you their worst sins when their lives are in danger and they want the reassurance of God's forgiveness from someone they see as God's representative.  (I believe all baptized Christians are God's representatives, by the way.  As my Baptist supervisor says, you can be a priest to any individual as long as that individual ordains you for service to them.)

So what does this theological liberal say when someone asks me "Do you think God will forgive me?"  My first question often is "I don't know. What did you do?"  I usually follow this up quickly with "I believe that God wants to forgive everyone, so if you're asking me if God will forgive you or that God can forgive you, the answer is yes.  But if you are asking me to assure you that God has forgiven you of a specific sin, then I need to know what the sin was but, more importantly, I need to know how you have repented.  You need to make things right not only with God, but with the person against whom you sinned, if that's applicable."

Tough stuff for a theological liberal?  And how does that fit with a theology of unconditional grace and forgiveness?

My theology of unconditional grace and forgiveness is my belief that God wants to forgive every person and that God will forgive every and any sin.  There is no such thing as an unforgivable sin.  There is no such thing as an unforgivable person.

But....unconditional grace is an entirely different thing than cheap grace. Here is an example of cheap grace: "God forgive me for being with a prostitute yesterday night and, by the way, you and I know full well that I intend to do it again."  Not only is this not repentance from a theological point of view, but from a simple human perspective, we all know in our hearts and our guts that this is not repentance.

We can run away from this fact all we want, but if you are a cardiac patient who is conscious and awake and you know that, medically, you might die any minute, believe me that you know darn well that this is not a repentance.  And that's probably why you're calling the chaplain in.

The patient asks the words "Will God forgive me?" and the answer to that is yes.  The question that the patient should be asking, however, is "Will I be able to benefit from God's forgiveness if I don't really intend to amend my ways?"  The answer to that is no.

So what happens to that cardiac patient?  If the patient dies without having had the opportunity to confess to his wife, to amend his life in faithfulness to his marriage vows and to demonstrate his repentance, will God have forgiven him?  I don't know.  And neither does anyone else.  This is why we leave judgements of the human heart to God.  God knows if a person is genuinely sorry and I believe genuine repentance is possible, even without having had the opportunity to demonstrate one's repentance.

The real tragedy of sin is that so many people live in the hell of unforgiveness for many years.  And if you visit a patient whose life is in danger and who wants to make a confession, you know that it truly has been hell.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Pam

I have been a Hospital Chaplain in a UK hospital for the last ten years. I cannot say that too many people have wanted me to hear their 'confession' but I did have one family where the wife/daughter had committed suicide whilst in prison. Her husband was particularly anxious to talk with me and to ask me if I thought that God would forgive his wife. I told him that in my opinion since God is a God of love and abounding in mercy that he would indeed forgive her if she a) asked for forgiveness and b) accepted the forgiveness that was offered. I believe that this is what God's 'grace and mercy' is about. I hope you agree and don't think that I was offering 'cheap grace'???

Allan

PamBG said...

Allan:

Yes, I agree with you. I had hoped in the post to make that clear.

I believe that God stands ready always to forgive.

But I don't see how we benefit from that forgiveness if we don't repent.

If someone isn't willing to discuss with me how they have repented, I can't assure them that they have been forgiven for that sin. I can only tell them that God does not view their sin as unforgivable.

How does that seem to you?

Anonymous said...

Pam:

Well it seems good but I always think about the parable of the Prodigal Son where the father called for the best robe etc before the son could express his repentance. And the woman who anointed Jesus...loving much because she had been forgiven much.

Do you not think that the church sometimes gets things the wrong way round? And do we as ministers sometimes require from people information, assurances etc which rightly belong between the other person and God? How much do we need to know before we can assure someone that they are forgiven? There seem to be lots of NT examples where Jesus forgave people before asking for evidence of their repentance e.g. the paralysed man or...do I misread/misunderstand the Bible?

I don't want to be provocative Pam, and I'm really glad to find a hospital chaplain who is blogging, albeit from across the pond!

Allan

PamBG said...

Allan, it would probably be interesting to have a conversation in person! Blogs are not the easiest places to have a conversation.

I might not be communicating properly, or maybe I'm not hearing you correctly.

Yes, I believe that the father of the Prodigal Son was waiting to greet him with open arms, but the son had to come home first to benefit from his father's love.

Another image I use is that God's grace (in this case, God's forgiveness) is like a Christmas present that God puts under the Christmas tree without us asking. But, in order to benefit from what's inside, we have to take the present and open it up.

So, say a guy in cardiac ICU who knows he might die tomorrow tells me "I'm really sorry for cheating on my wife and this knowledge is tearing me apart, but I'm not going to apologize to my wife and I'm not going to confess to God."

You think I should say to him "That's OK, you can have peace of mind by simply knowing that God forgave you anyway."?

To me, that's just a ridiculous thing to say because we all know it's not true.

The only thing I can personally say with authenticity is "I believe that God will forgive you, but if you want real peace before you die, I suggest you apologize to your wife as well."

Maybe you can tell me what you'd say to such a person?

Anonymous said...

Yes, it would be so much better to have a continuous conversation. I suspect that our thinking is probably very similar in fact. I just get worried that sometimes we seem to require too much from the people to whom we minister. Let me give two examples. If the chap in ITU spoke to you about having defrauded hundreds of people in some kind of internet scam, presumably he wouldn't be able to confess and ask for pardon from all or any of them. Equally, in church on Sunday morning, after the prayer of confession there is in the Methodist Church usually a declaration of forgiveness and in other churches absolution etc. We don't require each person to tell us in detail what they are confessing yet we assure them of forgiveness. Do we mean that or is the forgiveness we offer conditional?

I'm sorry it takes me so long to get back to you but I'm not online every day.

Allan

PamBG said...

If the chap in ITU spoke to you about having defrauded hundreds of people in some kind of internet scam, presumably he wouldn't be able to confess and ask for pardon from all or any of them.

I think I'm really having a hard time communicating here.

Let's assume for the moment, that he decides to say a prayer of confession to God but he's not actually sorry for what he did, he's just afraid of God. I can pray that prayer of confession with him and he's not going to have any kind of lasting peace.

That's not me requiring anything of him. I'm just speaking the truth beforehand: "If you don't really mean your confession, you're not going to find peace. But I do believe that God wants to forgive you."

I'm not sure if I'm communicating badly or what.

Can you give me an example of someone praying a prayer of confession for something that they weren't really sorry for and deriving any kind of spiritual benefit from it?

Anonymous said...

Pam

I think I too am having problems communicating.

The answer to your last question is of course'No'. That is not my concern. My concern is that the man's confession and God's forgiveness are matters between him and God. Is it not true that there are gospel instances of forgiveness coming before repentance, of forgiveness leading to repentance? Might that not happen today if we could assure someone of God's forgiveness and love and grace rather than always focusing on repentance first. I'm sorry to go on about this. Maybe my theology is shaky but don't give up on me!!

Allan

Anonymous said...

Pam

I think I too am having problems communicating.

The answer to your last question is of course'No'. That is not my concern. My concern is that the man's confession and God's forgiveness are matters between him and God. Is it not true that there are gospel instances of forgiveness coming before repentance, of forgiveness leading to repentance? Might that not happen today if we could assure someone of God's forgiveness and love and grace rather than always focusing on repentance first. I'm sorry to go on about this. Maybe my theology is shaky but don't give up on me!!

Allan

PamBG said...

Absolutely, those things are questions between him and God. Absolutely, God can forgive someone before they repent.

But what do you say if someone says "I've committed a sin and I'm not going to tell you what it is but do you think that God has forgiven me for it?"

I can remember three times in the past twelve months that someone has said that to me.

How the heck can I know if God HAS forgiven the person?

Seriously, what do you say to that?

Authentically, I can say that I believe that God wants to forgive everyone. But when people are walking around with guilty consciences, and they themselves don't think that they have actually repented, equally, who am I to tell them that God has forgiven them?

As you say, this is between them and God.

And I notice you're evading my question about what you would say to the person? Would you tell a person who was basically asking you "can I get away with sinning and not reform my life?" that sure he can? Because I think that would be a lie.

Anonymous said...

Pam

Of course that would not be my answer. I'm sorry not to have answered your question. I would say something along the lines of...Of course God is willing to forgive you, waiting to forgive you because God is a God of mercy and boundless love. Forgiveness is his gift to you but like any gift has to be accepted/received by you. And the very receiving of it might change you and and your relationship with the person/people you hurt.

again, my apologies for taking so long to reply. And I do hope hospital chaplaincy gives you as much job satisfaction as it does me??

Allan

PamBG said...

I would say something along the lines of...Of course God is willing to forgive you, waiting to forgive you because God is a God of mercy and boundless love. Forgiveness is his gift to you but like any gift has to be accepted/received by you. And the very receiving of it might change you and and your relationship with the person/people you hurt.

That sounds like a great response to me!

I suspect our points of view are actually very close.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure they are and I hope you'll blog more about hospital chaplaincy because there seems to be a dearth of such blogs on the internet. Do you know of any and if so do you follow them?

Allan

PamBG said...

Allan, unfortunately, my job disappeared after I wrote the first post to this blog. I have an interview this coming Wednesday and there is also a chance the previous job might reappear. (Can't give too many details on a public blog, obviously.)

I was previously aware of the British Methodist Church's general chaplaincy blog at: http://www.opensourcechaplaincy.org.uk/

I Googled "Hospital Chaplain blog" and found Episcopal Chaplain at the Bedside at: http://episcopalhospitalchaplain.blogspot.com/
and, through him, The World of Pastoral and Spiritual Care blog at: http://achaplainsjourney.wordpress.com/