Step 9: Made Direct Amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.
Though I shouldn’t have been, I was quite surprised when I began looking at the Biblical directives to make amends – “confess”. My mind went immediately to a well known passage in James, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” (chapter 1 v 6. Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. ) This passage has long been important to me because it plays a significant part in my Mum’s story of asking the elders at church to pray over her for healing and having the cancerous tumor in her abdomen disappear literally, overnight.
The passage has drastic connotations. Normally when we “go to church,” we put our game faces on. People sitting next to us in the pews know very little of what is really going on in our lives. The idea of a “shared life” is as foreign as living in the Falkland Islands (unless of course you’ve lived there or currently live there.)
It is a shame that we have lost the reality that what unites us is not our strength and shared “victory in Jesus,” but rather our brokenness and need of His power in our life every day to simply live the way that He designed us and asks us to. Instead of sharing the reality of a marriage in crisis and kids in rebellion we feel the need to manage our image and pretend that we’re leading our perfect middle class family through the rough seas of a broken planet. We want others to think of us as better than we are because when we look at others, they seem so much more “put together” than we feel. The James passage is in direct contrast to this and gives us a way to live in real relationship that is so counter-intuitive to our natural way of thinking.
Now, while all of this is true, it does not quite get at the specific directive of the 9th step. “Confession,” in this instance, is not about “making amends.” It is about being honest and being real which are bigger principles we need to grapple with before we ever get to the action of making amends. This is not to say that God has nothing to say on the subject, but like His disciple Martin Luther, he has a way of saying things all over the place so we hear them all over the place, if we will but listen.
Below are a few more of His words on the subject.
"Or suppose you make a foolish vow of any kind, whether its purpose is for good or for bad. When you realize its foolishness, you must admit your guilt.5 "When you become aware of your guilt in any of these ways, you must confess your sin. -- Lev 5:4-6 (Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. )
Here is the scene, The children of Israel have left Egypt and are in route to the Promised Land. God is giving them direction on how they are to live life together. Very early on in his list of instructions (kind of like a list you leave for your teenagers when you are leaving them at home for the first time for a weekend) of how to live together. Here is my paraphrase, “When you are stupid, admit it and make it right.”
We all do stupid things. Many of us do them again and again. When we fall into this pattern we lose trust with people around us. When we make promises and don’t follow through. When we continually do same irritating thing that bothers or wrongs our co-workers or family members. When we keep making mistakes that cost our teammate’s games or trophies, it has become too easy to merely say, “I’m sorry.” It loses its meaning. Words evaporate in the air and all that is left is disappointment and a building vow never to trust that person again.
The writer of Leviticus says, “Confess your sin.” Now to a 21st century reader those three words are loaded because the word, “sin” is loaded, and “confession” is misunderstood. “Sin” here is simply missing the mark. And confession has in implied, “it won’t happen again” attached to it.
In AA members are taught a simple formula, “I was wrong. I hope you will forgive me. How can I make it right?” Those outside of twelve-step fellowships could learn from this.
Feeling badly about what you did (I’m sorry) means very little, really. You can feel badly for a whole gamut of reasons: people think less of you, you feel less of yourself, you hurt someone, etc… Why you are sorry is anyone’s guess. Acknowledging wrong however lets people know that you know you are not perfect, and that you screwed up. Asking how you can make it right lets them know you want to make up for what you did to the best of your ability. God has more to say on this a little later.
In Num 5:6-8 (still more or less the same section of Scripture as Leviticus) God has this to say: "Give the following instructions to the people of Israel: If any of the people—men or women—betray the Lord by doing wrong to another person, they are guilty. 7 They must confess their sin and make full restitution for what they have done, adding an additional 20 percent and returning it to the person who was wronged. 8 But if the person who was wronged is dead, and there are no near relatives to whom restitution can be made, the payment belongs to the Lord and must be given to the priest. Those who are guilty must also bring a ram as a sacrifice, and they will be purified and made right with the Lord.* (Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.)
Here God is a little more specific: Confess your sin and then make restitution to those you wronged – 120% of the cost of the wrongdoing. And if the person and / or his family is no longer alive give the 120% to God.
Someone may ask why God has this in his list of instructions and God answers in the Psalm 32:3-5: When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. 4 Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.Interlude 5 Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, "I will confess my rebellion to the Lord." And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.(Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. )
This was a lesson that I learned too late in life: I confess because it is good for me. I do not confess for the good of the other person. I confess in order to maintain my own connection to my Creator. I do not have the power to break the connection of the person I wronged or re-connect it. I only have the power to keep my connection in place. I do not make amends for the other person. I make amends for me and in so doing restore my connection to my Creator and allow for the possibility of ongoing relation to the other person. Our ongoing relationship ultimately relies on their relationship with their Creator. The only way any of us have any relationships at all are if God is in the middle either intentionally or completely unrecognised – but that is another post in and of itself.
We will end with 1 John 1:8-10: “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.(Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.)
Part of being human in a fallen world is a demand to be god. We live in a universe that is running away from its centre. Scientists tell us that there was a big explosion and since that moment in time each piece of the universe is moving at extraordinary speed toward complete isolation, away from all other created objects, away from that awful explosion that sent us careening out of control away from our Creator. (Well the scientists don’t say that last bit.)
We are but microcosms of the macro picture. We too in our natural state are moving away from the centre, which is our Creator, and in so doing we can’t help but move away from our fellows. It is simply the trajectory that by our nature we were created on. The only way to find true union is to change trajectories, turn around and move back toward the centre, toward union with God and our fellows. That requires the death of our natural self which wants to be self-sufficient and is grandiose and fragile.
Our natural trajectory is way off the mark. In and of itself it is leading us toward a world of aloneness and pain. God’s word for it in John’s letter is “sin”. I find that the word is unhelpful though because it is so loaded. Word’s have pictures and “sin’s” word picture for me and many like me simply doesn’t work.
To get a better picture of what God is saying that does work, I’ll accept: sick, going the wrong direction, got on the wrong freeway, self-centred, ego-centric, etc… because all those words paint a picture that I can accept. John may say, “If we say we have not sinned…” I will say, “If you think everyone is not ego-centric and self centred…”
Come on, we all have, we all do… the 9th step is simply about admitting how broken and foolish we are. We can laugh on the back side of things… “You know what an idiot I was… I remember when…” everyone laughs because we’ve all been there. That is confession.
That is the 9th step. I need to add one note here. The end of the 9th step states: “Except when to do so would injure them or others.” Above I stated that the reason we make amends is for ourselves. Now while this is true, it is true within the confines of love.
It is wrong form me to unload my dump truck of guilt on your head so that I can feel better about myself knowing that in so doing I am turning your world on its head and destroying any foundation you may have.
There are Christian counsellors here in my city that argue that a complete “dump” has to be made for restoration to occur. I could not disagree more. I love you first, and in loving you I tell you the truth, and commit to being completely truthful with you, but I do not dump on you. Perhaps that should also be explored further in another post.
What is important is that we recognize that Bill Wilson figured some things out when he wrote these steps down that allowed alcoholics and addicts that wanted recovery to find a way to connect with God and find life free from drugs and alcohol. Those same steps can work for anyone that wants to connect with Jesus.
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