I Have a Confession to Make

In support of her latest novel, Daisy Chain, Christian author Mary DeMuth launched Family Secrets, a website where users can anonymously confess their secrets to an online audience. DeMuth writes, "In Daisy Chain, many characters harbor secrets, but only a few are brave enough to bring them to the light of day and find freedom and hope. That's why I created this site—to give you a safe place to air a secret anonymously."

DeMuth's project picks up on a confessional trend made famous by PostSecret, a blog that posts submissions from its ongoing community mail art project, in which people mail their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. The blog, which boasts of attracting 284,343,252 visitors (and counting), has been turned into museum exhibits as well as five books, the most recent of which tackled the topic Confessions on Life, Death, and God. The idea is to rob the secrets of their powerful grip as writers identify, process, and share with others those things they are afraid to admit to themselves.

There's a simple reason these blogs are so popular: We experience a rush as we recognize the pain and courage each entry represents, heightened when we find ourselves connecting with the confessions. "I thought I was the only one," we marvel as we see our own hearts in the words of a stranger.

Confessing to others is good for our spirits and psyches. Often we evangelicals make light of it, thinking of it as "a Catholic thing" and insisting that God is the only one we need to confess to. But by doing this, we ignore not only the rich tradition of confession in church settings, but also the biblical command: "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective" (James 5:16).

But we need to be careful. There's something unsettling about the voyeuristic consumption these types of projects encourage when they lack an accountability structure. When we give voice to things we have been afraid to confront, we rob them of their powerful hold over us. When we confess these things to other people, we admit that we cannot handle them alone, and enter into the kind of community that is called not to judge but to lift up and support. But when we just throw confessions into the Internet's vast expanse, to people who have no connection to us and no way to follow up as we continue on with our lives—is this something we should encourage?

Just one example: The postcard on the back of the newest PostSecret book says, "I'm a Christian who is falling in love with someone who doesn't believe in God … I think it's a beautiful love story." As a piece of art, it poignantly depicts the truth of a common struggle. We can pray, and, as the James verse reminds us, that is a powerful, effective response. But this is not how we are called to live in community. As it is, we can only hope that this person has other Christians to surround them with love and support, to sharpen them "as iron sharpens iron." And, in the case of the confessors at Family Secrets—many of whom have histories of sexual and physical abuse—we can only hope that they have the supportive relationships and the wisdom of a Christian counselor to help heal the scars of a hellish childhood.

These types of exercises point us in the right direction. To search our hearts and share those things we most fear is to recognize that we are not meant to carry all of life's burdens ourselves. But just saying it isn't enough. We need to connect with people who will hold us accountable to the change we say we want, and who will ask how they can help us in the difficult process of turning confession into change.

What do you think of these confessional blogs? Are they a helpful tool? How should we approach the act of confession in the church?