Friday 16 July 2010

"I, a poor miserable sinner..."

I'm not sure how other traditions handle it, but in the church of my childhood every service began with corporate confession.

"O almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor miserable sinner, confess to Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have offended Thee and justly deserved Thy punishment in time and in eternity..." (Lutheran Hymnal, Adelaide, 1973 edition)

Hey, talk about self-esteem!

In fact, I can still pretty-much recite those words off by heart from the liturgy that was pounded in Sunday by Sunday at St Matthew's in Hamilton. The current version has had a rewrite, but the substance remains unaltered.

Now along comes a dude who expresses all my misgivings in one lucid piece of writing. It probably won't make sense unless you have a background in this kind of liturgical tradition, but if you do, you might find yourself muttering an 'amen' or two along the way.

1 comment:

  1. Oh, that's just charming. And you were expected to repeat it every single week?! That's worse indoctrination than the church ever pulled on us, IMO.

    I admit, the author of the post you linked to, lost me about a third of the way through. But the first part of the post? Exemplifies why any form of institutionalized religion is, in my opinion, a very bad thing.

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