Photo of the Day: The Nature of Confession

I decided to take CSLentIPJ’s photo prompt of “confession” and turn it into a writing prompt for this blog post.

During my MTV/VH1 phase, I saw this interview with The All-American Rejects where they talk about the making their music video “Dirty Little Secret.” The music video shows people holding index cards with drawings and various secrets written on them. Later on, I found out the website they got those secrets from, PostSecret. For a while, I was obsessed with the website. Sharing anonymous secrets has taken on a new form on social networking sites like Tumblr and Instagram. Tumblr provides the option of making “asks” anonymous. Some Instagram accounts I follow post a series of “confessionals” and share secrets about themselves with all of their followers.

Fr. Robert Barron goes into this whole phenomenon of sharing secrets and public confessions on one of his videos:

Fr. Dwight Longnecker explains the point of view of the penitent in his post that talks about his first Confession.

There’s something in our hearts that compels us to share our secrets and sins with someone. In spite of the declarations of “only God can judge” or “once saved always saved” or the idea of dualism that acts of the body don’t affect the soul, there’s still that desire for sympathy, for forgiveness, for acceptance in spite of our faults. We seek validation for our lives. We seek to improve ourselves. And sometimes, we seek solace.

Confession is unique in that it helps us acknowledge that we are not perfect, but we’re not completely broken either. It shows that no one is beyond saving and that God is a God of second chances.

So for my photo for today, I want to share this confession with you about something I’ve been called recently.