Angst Into the Void

[dragon wench]

Confessions Pour Out on Church’s Web Site

Intimate Confessions Pour Out on Church’s Web Site
By NEELA BANERJEE

On a Web site called mysecret.tv, there is the writer who was molested years ago by her baby sitter and who still cannot forgive herself for failing to protect her younger siblings from the same abuse.

There is the happy father, businessman and churchgoer who is having a sexual relationship with another man in his church. There is the young woman who shot an abusive boyfriend when she was high on methamphetamine.

Then there is this entry: “Years ago I asked my father, ‘How does a daddy justify selling his little girl?’ He replied, ‘I needed to pay the rent, put food on the table and I liked having a few coins to jangle in my pocket.’ ”

About a month ago, LifeChurch, an evangelical network with nine locations and based in Edmond, Okla., set up mysecret.tv as a forum for people to confess anonymously on the Internet.

The LifeChurch founder, the Rev. Craig Groeschel, said that after 16 years in the ministry he knew that the smiles and eager handshakes that greeted him each week often masked a lot of pain. But the accounts of anguish and guilt that have poured into mysecret.tv have stunned him, Mr. Groeschel said, and affirmed his belief in the need for confession.

“We confess to God for forgiveness but to each other for healing,” Mr. Groeschel said. “Secrets isolate you, and keep you away from God, from those people closest to you.”

LifeChurch, which is 10 years old, tries to draw back those who may have left the faith, Mr. Groeschel said. The church hews to a conservative theology on homosexuality and abortion.

Its nine sites, in Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas, draw a total of 18,000 people to weekend services. LifeChurch also has a “virtual campus” online, and it relies on technology to bind together its “campuses” through endeavors like broadcast sermons.

Still, mysecret.tv represents the first time the church has had an interactive Web site tied to its sermons, in this case a series that Mr. Groeschel began last month on the need for confession.

“I can’t tell you how many hundreds of times people have told me that ‘I’m going to tell you something, Pastor, I’ve never told anyone before,’ ” Mr. Groeschel said. “I realized that people are carrying around dark secrets, and the Web site is giving them a first place for confession.”

The Internet already offers many places to confess, from the dry menu of sins at www.absolution-online.com to the raunchy exhibitionism at sites like www.confessionjunkie.com and www.grouphug.us. It is impossible to know whether these stories, like much on the Internet, are sincere or pure fiction.

One of the best-known sites is postsecret.blogspot.com, an extension of an art project in which people write their secrets on postcards and mail them to an address in Germantown, Md.

Mysecret.tv may be singular because it gives people at LifeChurch an easy opportunity to act on the sermons, said Scott L. Thumma, professor of the sociology of religion at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

“It’s not what you typically expect when a pastor delivers his weekly sermon, and you hit the back door and forget what he said,” Professor Thumma said. “Here it takes on a life of its own, and the folks that are here are not just those who go to LifeChurch.”

Since its inception, mysecret.tv has received more than 150,000 hits and more than 1,500 confessions, Mr. Groeschel said. Absolution is not part of the bargain, just the beginning of release.

“There’s no magic in confessing on a Web site,” Mr. Groeschel said. “My biggest fear is that someone would think that and would go on with life. This is just Step 1.”

The confessions are often just a paragraph or two. Some are eloquent, almost literary. Others are long, rushed and without punctuation, as if the writer needed to get it all out in one breath.

The starkness of the tersest confessions is jolting: “I have verbally and physically abused my wife.”

Another, referring to a spouse, said: “I tell you I love you everyday. Truth is I do love you, but I’m not in love with you, and I never have been. I just don’t want to hurt you and feel worthless.”

Many women speak of their regrets over having had abortions.

Other writers say they cannot shake the recurring nightmare of being sexually abused as children. Most were abused by relatives, neighbors and friends. Some went on to abuse younger children in their families. They state simply how their parents often did nothing to help. A few wonder where God is in all this.

“When I was 7, I was sexually abused by a guy,” a girl wrote. “Then, when I was 13, my mum did the same thing to me. Now I am 16 and scared. My doctor put me in a mental home. Sometimes, I think where is Jesus and why’s he not helping me.”

Because the site is anonymous, the staff at LifeChurch cannot reach out to those who are in danger of harming themselves or others, Mr. Groeschel said.

Professor Thumma pointed out that the resources section of the site could be improved. It now lists mostly religious books rather than mental health services.

Perhaps the most important activity the Web site has is letting people know that they are not alone in their suffering, Professor Thumma said. It harkens to the now rare practice of “testimony time” at evangelical churches, he said, when “you could hear stories about people overcoming problems, stories of hope, so that you felt you weren’t the only one struggling.”

Among those changed by the confessions is Mr. Groeschel himself.

“Knowing that so many people I see every week on the outside look so normal, and yet inside there is so much pain, that has been surprising,” he said. “When you hear about it in their own words, it’s hard to bear.”


I guess two things strike me here initially. First, I'm not at all surprised... My second, and more lasting, impression is..... how profoundly sad.

[C Elegans]

Sad, but by no means unexpected or surprising. It seems perfectly consistent with the increasing social isolation in Western society. Individualism and the core family, contrary to collectivism and group-living, has this effect, especially in a society like ours where materialistic values and "success"-paradigms are predominant.

It is also in line with the results of the study about internet and social isolation that I posted earlier.

[DesR85]

Hmm. Interesting site. Its also sad that people had to go through the pain of carrying around a terrible secret. However, confessing my sins to a website is not what I would like to do, in my opinion. Seems a bit out of the ordinary if you ask me.

[dragon wench]

@CE,
yes, I thought of that study when I read the above article. I think, in relation to the social isolation, what really strikes me here is just how truly awful it must be to carry these things around and feel as though you can't unburden them except in an anonymous, cyberspace confession.....
It must doubly difficult for people who are part of an evangelical community, because their tight social strictures could make them feel as though they have somehow failed as human beings... and they would be carrying around all of that immense guilt.. without much needed treatment.



@Des,
I know what you mean. I've confided to people I've come to know well over IM... but I just can't imagine burping up all of that pain over a public message board. However, I don't think it is all that unusual. While I don't really think it is quite the same thing, in terms of self exposure it reminds me a bit of people who discuss their secrets and personal problems to extreme length on TV talk shows. Except, of course, the internet is far more anonymous.

[C Elegans]

Have you read Donna Tartt's first novel "The secret history?". In this novel, the narrator says:

"I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell."

This is of course an authors way of expressing it in a literary way and a way that is aimed at creating tension and interest for the story that is to come, but to me, it is also a good description of the destructive power of occupation with things that people have not managed to work through properly and leave behind.

For the vast majority of people, guilt, shame, sorrow, trauma, severe emotional pain and/or stress, everything, is much easier to cope with and work through if you have a good social network. If you have to express your feelings or tell your "secrets" in a way that does not even include communication, your social support must be very, very insufficient.

[dragon wench]

Have you read Donna Tartt's first novel "The secret history?". In this novel, the narrator says:

"I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell."

This is of course an authors way of expressing it in a literary way and a way that is aimed at creating tension and interest for the story that is to come, but to me, it is also a good description of the destructive power of occupation with things that people have not managed to work through properly and leave behind.

For the vast majority of people, guilt, shame, sorrow, trauma, severe emotional pain and/or stress, everything, is much easier to cope with and work through if you have a good social network. If you have to express your feelings or tell your "secrets" in a way that does not even include communication, your social support must be very, very insufficient.

Yes, I have read that novel... And I think you are right in your analogy. Indeed, from what I've experienced personally and from what I know of others, not dealing head on with things like guilt, sorrow etc. causes problems that are manifested in both physical and mental/emotional health. Or, as in the case of Tartt's novel....utter destruction of community and self.

.... I can't imagine pouring out deeply personal things in a manner that does not involve some kind of real response or reciprocation. I only do things like that (such as writing poetry or writing in my journal) if something is just too painful and personal to discuss even with my closest friends. And, I really sense the difference too. If I'm simply writing for myself, to somehow spew it out, sure there's a level of relief. But, it really is not the same as sharing with another human being.
Yet, I have friends with whom I can share and discuss...
To not be able to do so... I suspect that people in the field have only just started to scratch the surface of how terribly destructive social isolation like this can be.

[VonDondu]

Originally Posted by C Elegans

For the vast majority of people, guilt, shame, sorrow, trauma, severe emotional pain and/or stress, everything, is much easier to cope with and work through if you have a good social network. If you have to express your feelings or tell your "secrets" in a way that does not even include communication, your social support must be very, very insufficient.

I don't see how that follows. Even if people have sufficient social support, why can't it be possible that they still have to express their feelings or tell their "secrets" in a way that does not even include communication? I'm thinking of a society that has lots of taboos, or a person whose shame is so great he or she can't even talk about it.

[C Elegans]

Originally Posted by VonDondu

I don't see how that follows. Even if people have sufficient social support, why can't it be possible that they still have to express their feelings or tell their "secrets" in a way that does not even include communication? I'm thinking of a society that has lots of taboos, or a person whose shame is so great he or she can't even talk about it.

"Sufficient social support", as defined in the article I linked to, and in health psychology in general, would include at least one core confident which you can communicate with. Thus, per definition, a person who is homosexual and lives in a society where homosexuality is such a great taboo so s/he cannot talk to any single person about this, would not be defined as having "sufficient social support". So, it follows, that this person, as well as the person who has no core confidents and write on the internet instead, would both have insufficent social support.

Now, in my experience and also from the few studies on this topic, it seems that even in a society where something is a great taboo, it is possible to find core confidents who are prepared to keep your secrets secret. People who share you unaccepted traits or act, people who are loyal to you as a person despite what you have done or what you think or people who are dissident from the society you live in.

[VonDondu]

Originally Posted by C Elegans

"Sufficient social support", as defined in the article I linked to, and in health psychology in general, would include at least one core confident which you can communicate with. Thus, per definition, a person who is homosexual and lives in a society where homosexuality is such a great taboo so s/he cannot talk to any single person about this, would not be defined as having "sufficient social support". So, it follows, that this person, as well as the person who has no core confidents and write on the internet instead, would both have insufficent social support.

Okay, that makes sense. But it's very confusing when we define "having" sufficient social support as "being willing and able to use it". In other words, the only difference between two people who have the same number of people they can talk to might be that one of them will talk to those people and the other one won't. That just seems like a strange way to define social support.

[C Elegans]

Originally Posted by VonDondu

In other words, the only difference between two people who have the same number of people they can talk to might be that one of them will talk to those people and the other one won't. That just seems like a strange way to define social support.

This definition has the willingness and intrinsic need for at least one "core confident" as a prerequisite. From what I've seen in the social psychology/sociology (which admittedly is not my speciality) people who have no need to communicate with others, are not really included since they are supposed to be very few. A lack of wish to communicate with others is actually defined as abnormal.

I would say that a person who would like to communicate with others but can't or doesn't dare to due to fear for social punishment, does not have a sufficient social network whereas a person who is simply not interested in communicating with others have a sufficient social network since that persons needs are actually fulfilled (ie no need). Studies of social networks usually don't take the latter into account since they only make up a few per mille of the population and thus wouldn't change the results in any significant way.