[PREFACE TO RPF: I am known, perhaps not well known, for being somewhat trollish and 'tongue in cheek' is practically my motto. This post however is in total absolute seriousness and I desire that all who would hear a confession or would like insight into what was a profound Christian truth for me, that they please read it. It has followed me for many years and while the burden has been great it is mine to bear.]
I made a decision today to be on the forums more consistently and participate because I believe what is happening here is important. I had some relevant things I wanted to post about, things I think would be helpful, and I had originally intended for this confessional revelation of mine to be only a part. After some thought I believe this is actually the most important thing.
Ron Paul referred to this movement as "the awakening of the remnant", to paraphrase. Paul is a Christian, and given his commitment to being intellectually sound I can only assume he understands that the "remnant" is a biblical reference. The remnant is essentially the real "Israel", or what's left of it. It isn't a country. Now the libertarians, based on Nock's work, seem to want to secularize this concept to just mean, "the smart people that nature hides until the 'time' has come." If you google 'Ron Paul remnant' you'll see that pretty much none of the libertarian bloggers talk about this remnant in the religious sense. But the original connection came from Ron's mouth, a Christian.
I mention this because to me, this movement is the remnant of God's people. I can't know whether this movement is the remnant in the literal biblical sense, but it is most certainly, to me, the remnant of truth. I believe the heart of this movement is Christian. There may be secular people in this movement but they are committed to truth all the same. As Simone Weil has said, "Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth."
So being that my Christian heroes are the likes of Tolstoy, Simone Weil, and Kierkegaard, I've never believed Christ's church is only located in buildings with crosses on them. It is actually people and this movement, to me, is the closest I've really felt to being in a church so it seems the proper venue for making a confession.
So this is my confession before my church. It is slightly long but only because I want to show how powerful the revelation was to me when I finally understood it. Perhaps it will give you insight into your own struggles. If I simply describe the act itself it may seem insignificant.
. . .
This is my confession. Before posting this only my wife and son knew this story, and that only last year, as well as the victim of the act and the witnesses that were present. But when I told my wife and kid about this story I didn't frame it in confession and repentance, I sugar coated it as a "lesson".
My name is David Watson. I'm currently 35 residing in Topeka, Kansas. The incident in question occurred when I was in the 6th or 7th grade in 1990/91. I know some think that perhaps I was too young to be culpable but I was past the age of accountability for me. I knew it was wrong when I did it.
Now while I consider this my greatest sin it certainly isn't my only one.
I've:
stolen things
hated friends in secret
hatefully gossiped
lusted after countless women
given in to nearly every manner of sexual perversion and fantasy
swelled with pride and vanity when it suited me
gave in to drunkeness with drugs and alcohol
been envious of people smarter and wealthier than I was
slandered Christ at every opportunity in my teenage years
told more lies than I can count
entertained revenge fantasies
broken countless promises
been lazy as hell since the day I was born, sloth is a hard enemy for me
It is not to say I haven't tried to be good and help people all the while, but I see myself as guilty as any man, from the drunk to the tyrant, and I thank God for that view.
Even one promise I considered very important, not to be violent and scornful with my son, I broke. He had disrespected his mother in such a severe way that I became wrathful. He saw it in my eyes and ran away from me and I chased him down and spanked him very hard when he was six. He has never forgotten it and likely never will.
But of all these things I had done, in the back of my mind this incident in middle school was always, and still is to me, my greatest sin.
. . .
We were very poor at that time. I lived in a house with drunken, gambling, neglectful parents. House was roach infested and not cleaned hardly ever. I remember finding a den of maggots on our kitchen counter under a dish drainer. We had dogs and our clothes were piled on the floor in mine and my brothers bedroom that was flea infested. We used to have contests to see who could tolerate flea bites the longest as they jumped on our legs before rubbing them off. My clothes were always ratty, or unwashed, and half the time my shoes soles were coming off. Kids used to say, "Hey David, your shoes are talking to you."
I was intelligent and somewhat handsome and I desired nothing more to escape that life. I hated my parents and everything they stood for. In school I seeked approval from all my teachers for how "smart" I was, and from other kids by doing the things they did.
But I was not the poorest. Certainly not in the sense of God's gifts of intelligence and not even in my poverty.
No, the poorest was a very specific person. Her name was Tina Carlisle. She was from the same type of neighborhood as me, her clothes were rattier, she wasn't smart, she was overweight even at that age, not pretty, and she smelled as though she never took a bath, and like me on "free lunch" at the school. Everyone knew who she was. She was not "a" skank, she was "the" skank. And to me, she was the manifestation of everything I hated about my life and myself. I did not want to be associated with her even in the slightest, lest people recognize the similarity.
So here it is.
One day at lunch I was sitting a couple seats down from her. For people like me and her seemed like there was never enough food. You could get "seconds" but only a side. She had never spoken a word to me before this day. But on that day she saw that I wasn't going to eat the piece of bread I had on my plate. She asked, "can I have that bread if you are not going to eat it?" For her to even ask in front of all the other kids was a great act of courage. And I suppose she saw a fellowship with me since we were both in the basement of the social order. But I saw this as an opportunity to separate myself from her.
I looked at her with disgust and in front of everyone I took my finger, rubbed it into the piece of bread and said "do you want it now?"
As a kid, by itself, might not seem like the most horrible crime. Maybe just being an incredible douche.
The only person who spoke up was a girl named Melissa Mulvaney. She got angry and said "that's mean!" and everyone else was silent.
I brushed it off at the time but the memory of doing that kept following me. I understood over time that this was the real evil in the world-that kind of behavior.
But the enormity of the truth, God's truth, of this incident did not hit me until April of 2013, last year, at the age of 34.
I have seen a lot of truth. I have studied so many fields that when people meet me they are surprised. From the various religions, to physics, to economics, politics, art, etc. I'm smart. It's a fact. It's a gift from God no doubt but in the world it's just a fact.
The day last year when it hit me I was at work outside in the smoking section having a smoke. I've been on a search for spiritual truth since about the age of 16. I was pondering over some thoughts about some things I had read about being "envious of Christ on the cross" and how that played into me wanting to be a leader, and in relation to a monetary project I've been working on for years. That we want to be the savior on "behalf" of Christ instead of following him as a savior.
Numerous things popped into my head. I remembered Christ saying, as I understood it, "whatever of do to the least of these, you do to me". My crime against Tina popped into my head. Along with the words "I am the bread of life", and also I had a vision (not 'supernatural' just a strong symbolic mental vision and feeling) of Christ asking for water and the soldier mocking him and giving him vinegar instead. I felt very strongly that doing that to her was as if I had done it to Christ himself. I started crying. I felt that all my sins were manifestations of this root sin I had never truly repented for. Like the trunk of a tree of sin.
But the Lord was not done. Suddenly a thought in my mind that should have connected long ago had fully connected. The time I spanked my child in anger was for something very specific. My wife had punished my son for something and he was angry. She asked him for half of his sandwich he wasn't going to eat and he put his hands down his pants and rubbed it into the sandwich. She got mad at him but I jumped in and was furious.
When this connection was made I wept so violently I had to practically hide in a nearby bush for a couple minutes until I could compose myself. It was like my life of sin was a circle at that point. Instead of teaching my son what the wrong was I lashed out at him for something I held myself the most guilty for and I never connected it in the three years that had since passed.
I thank the Lord for showing me the error of my ways.
For that sin I cannot ask forgiveness. I can only repent. I pray that if this woman has any sins on her head that Christ forgive them or put them on me. And if I should find my way into heaven that Christ keep her closer than me and the Lord keep her above me.
For this sin I repent first, and second all that followed it.
It is with tears that I write this.
That is the truth. And that is all I wanted to say.
- David Watson
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Originally Posted by wizardwatson
The sacrament of confession is very powerful. I've done some terrible things at that age too, and I don't have the kind of courage you have to confess them publicly. ~hugs~
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