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LEAVING THE ALTAR AND MAKING THE CALL #3

“THIS IS A CRAZY COUNTRY”

If you want to be stunned and amazed by a story of reconciliation, get a back copy — the February 9, 1998 issue — of the magazine Christianity Today. The cover story is entitled “South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” And the subtitle is very interesting: “How Much Truth Can We Take?”

Dr. L. Gregory Jones, the dean of the Divinity School at Duke University in North Carolina, wrote the article, and he’s also written a book entitled Embodying Forgiveness. But in this incredible magazine article he writes about how South Africa, after the end of apartheid, made a bold decision. Rather than reprisals and counter-reprisals, tit for tat, you-bomb-my-house-I-bomb-yours, and all the other vengeance patterns that have destroyed so many nations coming out of spiritual and social ruin, South Africa determined that it would set up a program of amnesty. Forgiving people for their hate crimes. NOT punishing your enemies for their brutal tactics from before.

“In so doing,” Jones writes, “South Africa is offering to the rest of the world a test of the power, AND perhaps the limits, of the Christian vision of reconciliation. For at the heart of the entire process of confessing the truth about the past is the conviction, and the hope, that a renewed future will be possible that is marked more by reconciliation and peace than by recurring cycles of violence and vengeance.”

So in 1993, with apartheid officially ended, and Nelson Mandela out of prison, they set up this program. Here’s just one sentence from the constitution:

“Amnesty shall be granted in respect of acts, omissions, and offenses associated with political objectives and committed in the course of the conflicts of the past.”

As they set up this process of amnesty — with the hearings that would accompany the program — three key elements were put into place. And one in particular is of interest to us as we keep on studying the Bible topic of confession. But first the list. Number one, they wanted Archbishop Desmond Tutu to pick the commission. Two, this commission had to be very carefully selected in order to make the whole thing work. But notice number three:

“The insistence that the ENTIRE TRUTH be told, including the sins and crimes committed by the victims of apartheid.”

In other words, forgiveness will be granted — amnesty will be provided — but only for those people who step forward and really DO tell “(quote) the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth.” There was to be no whitewashing of sin, no covering up of crimes. No pleading the Fifth, or saying while pointing to another person: “He made me do it. I was only following orders.”

And you know, friend, that Rule #3 is right out of the Word of God. In the New Testament, when John the Baptist was down at the Jordan, baptizing new believers, do you know what the would-be converts did? It tells us right in Matthew chapter three:

“CONFESSING THEIR SINS, they were baptized by him [John] in the Jordan River.”

Over in the book of Acts, as the fledgling Christian Church was just being birthed by people like Peter and Paul, it says this in chapter 19 about those early meetings:

“Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds.”

Notice the specificity of these two Bible verses. These weren’t generic confessions, as in: “Maybe some of my earlier testimony was at variance with the truth.” Or the old political line from the Watergate scandal: “Uh, that statement is no longer operative.” No, friend, these confessors were SPECIFIC. “I did THIS . . . and I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” Some of those joining the new Christian Church there in Acts chapter 19 might well have been PERSECUTORS of Christians just months or weeks before; the Apostle Paul went through
that. He certainly must have had some very painful and detailed confessions to make.

There’s a wonderful little book, a classic, that has been much appreciated in my own Adventist denomination — partly because it was penned by a beloved pioneer in our church: Mrs. Ellen White. Written back in the late 1800s, she entitled it Steps to Christ . . . and it’s no accident that one chapter bears this plain, one-word title: “Confession.” And really, friend, the Bible does tell us that confessing our sins is a very necessary step if we want to be walking together with Jesus in a close relationship. In any case, notice this paragraph as she talks about specificity:

“True confession is ALWAYS of a specific character, and acknowledges PARTICULAR sins. . . . All confession should be DEFINITE and to the point, acknowledging the very sins of which you are guilty.”

Our foundation Bible text for this whole week — and last week’s too — has been I John 1:9.

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

But in one of the Christian commentaries for this hallmark verse is a statement about specific confessions, and also an interesting point. First, they define this Greek word homologeo as “to admit the truth of an accusation.” And now the comment:

“John’s words” — that would be John, the beloved disciple — “show an awareness that sincere Christians do, at times, fall into sin. It is also clear that he is speaking of SPECIFIC ACTS of sin, and not of sin as an evil principle in the life. Accordingly, confession should be MORE specific than the mere admission of sinfulness.” And now this crucial truth: “The recognition of the precise nature of a sin and an understanding of the factors that led to its commission are essential to confession and to building up strength to resist a similar temptation when it recurs. Unwillingness to be specific may reveal an absence of true repentance and the lack of a real desire for all that forgiveness implies.”

Do you recall that story from last week, where Pastor Bill Hybels shared with us a sample prayer of confession. It went like this: “Lord, I told someone I was trying to impress that there were 900 cars in the parking lot for our big event, when there were only 600. That was a lie — and Lord, I guess that means that I’M a liar. Lord, I don’t WANT to be a liar anymore.” Specific prayer, specific confession, you see, helps you to team up with God to gain strength in fighting that focused, well defined enemy. When you confess lying as your sin, and NAME lying as your spiritual enemy, that’s so much more productive than: “Lord, if You get around to it, please forgive all my sins . . . IF there are any. Right now I’m not aware of a thing.”

Back to this Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. There’s a sidebar article by Archbishop Desmond Tutu himself — and in an intriguing way, he says this: “We’re living in a crazy country.” But crazy how?

He relates how one army officer involved in a massacre in Bisho, the capital of the Ciskei homeland territory, got on the stand and just stonewalled. He hadn’t done anything wrong; nothing was his fault. He wasn’t even there, hardly.

“[This officer . . .] alienated the people with his insensitive tirade,” Tutu writes. But then he goes on: “Then another confessed his part and asked for forgiveness.” Real confession this time, a specific admission of guilt. And notice the result: “In the audience were people who had been wounded in THAT INCIDENT, people who had lost loved ones, but when that white army officer asked for forgiveness, they did not rush to strangle or assault him. Unbelievably, they applauded. Yes, this is a CRAZY country. I said at that point, let us keep silent, because we were in the presence of something special, of something holy. Many times I have felt we should take our shoes off because we were standing on holy ground.”

Isn’t that amazing? All because someone was willing to take the witness stand and confess: “I did this very thing. I WAS guilty.” In October of that same year of hearings, as Tutu tells the story, four cabinet members from the former apartheid regime testified in a State Security Council hearing. Here’s Tutu’s reporting again:

“They said apartheid had no moral basis. It was an immoral policy. They said they accepted political and moral responsibility. They said they could not say they did not know. That is a great deal more than anyone has said so far, and they did not evacuate their apology by letting it die the death of a thousand qualifications.” That’s an interesting metaphor. Tutu’s final line: “They said they apologized UNRESERVEDLY.”

An outside observer, an English professor from Seattle Pacific University named Susan VanZanten Gallagher, watched some of these Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.

“I sat for two long days,” she writes in a sidebar for Christianity Today, “spellbound, horrified yet mesmerized by riveting accounts of intimidation, assault, abduction, rape, torture, and murder.”

And time after time, there was confession — agonizingly REAL confession, intimate, horrible details. She was hearing mostly from the victims, but in these hearings, the perpetrators were also there, not holding back, not hiding behind some kind of blanket immunity. And after these brutal two days, and as she writes to share her recollection of it, she passes along an observation from a theologian who still lives in that scarred land of South Africa.

“The Christian understanding of repentance [and confession], forgiveness, and reparation is of fundamental importance in shaping a national consciousness that can heal the land, achieve reconciliation, and build a moral and democratic culture.”

And then Professor Gallagher ends her article with this:
“In this public, communal act of CONFESSION, South Africa is beginning to create a new national identity.”

Over and over, Desmond Tutu said: “This is crazy! Unbelievable! This is holy ground.”
Friend, back here at home, maybe you and I could use a little bit of holy ground ourselves.