I thought about calling this taxicab confessions, because this is risque stuff. Ok, not really. They’re just confessions. But this time it’s not people confessing sins to the Church. This is what it would sound like if the Church (or a spokesperson for the Church) could confess to the people she has been trying to reach. Here goes:

We confess to you that we have missed the mark. We have obscured grace and the gospel and made a big deal about following a lot of rules and regulations. Most of the time, We’re more concerned with rules than with justice, with giving more than compassion. We’re really good at making much of ourselves and our programs and strategies, but not so good at making much of Jesus and the Cross.

We confess that we’ve been obsessed with “taking back our country” and not about trying to advance the Kingdom of God. We’re all about the American Dream, but less so about God’s vision for the world. We need less of tea parties and more of the “cup of cold water” parties, as in “if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42).

We acknowledge that God created us in His image, but we confess that we have returned the favor by creating a god in our own image who just happens to hate who we hate and endorses our polilitical platforms and sends liberals to hell just because they are liberals. Our god judges only those whose sins are sins we don’t happen to struggle with. Our god would condemn homosexuality and promiscuity, but never gluttony or sloth. And especially not pride.

We confess that we have been silent when we should have spoken out about injustice and poverty. We confess our hearts do not break nearly enough over the thousands of children who die daily of hunger and malnutrition or of babies born with AIDS or of the thousands of children, men and women trapped in sex-trafficking.

We confess we have put up too many barriers between you and the Gospel. We preach God and conservitism, God and democracy, God and ecology, etc., but rarely just God (in the since that He and He alone is sufficient). We have talked like we were holier than thou, but we have lived just like you. You cry to us that the issue is not that we’re too different than you, but that we’re not different enough.

Here’s the gospel that we have so many times gotten complicated and confused. No matter how badly you’ve messed up or how far you’ve fallen, no matter what addiction you have that you just can’t break, no matter how dirty you feel in all your sin and secret shame, Jesus can still save you. He can change you. He can make you the person you always wanted to be in your best moments.

We’re trying. We just get it wrong a lot. We’re not perfect people, just forgiven people. We’re sorry we’ve made it seem like we’re perfect saints while we wear our masks that hide our scars. We’re sorry we haven’t been more authentic and genuine with you. We’re sorry we haven’t just loved you instead of judging and condemning you.

God’s working on us. And He always finishes what He starts. That’s a promise.