Confession

The story goes that several years ago, the late Rev. Furman Stough, then bishop of Alabama, was speaking to a group of children in an local parish. To begin, he asked them if they knew who he was, thinking that he would have the opportunity to explain to them a little about the church hierarchy. One little boy, apparently well-versed in BCP language, blurted out "I know who you are - You are a miserable offender!"

A while back, I searched all over for the phrase "miserable offender". I started by looking in the Book of Common Prayer, but I couldn't find it there. I googled "miserable offender", and finally, I went to a BCP website and typed "miserable offender" into the search engine. The fact that the phrase was a bit challenging to find was, I believe, a symptom. I finally came across it - not in the current version of the BCP, but in the 1928 prayer book, on page 23, part of the service of Evening Prayer, under "A General Confession":

"...We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou those, O God, who confess their faults..."

In my search, I ran across a fair number of comments both in websites and in blogs from people critical of the phrase, "miserable offender". Many feel that it's a bit harsh. I wondered if I could rewrite the confession so that it would be more palatable, something like this:

"...We have offended against thy holy laws on rare occassions. Sometimes, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done every now and then; but hey, nobody's perfect. Still, O Lord, even though we're generally OK, have mercy upon us, we're trying really hard. Spare those, O God, who can't quite get it right, and know that we're really sincere in our efforts..."

That said, another phrase comes to mind: "pussy footing".

I wonder how things would be different if we all truly and fully recognized our wretchedness - our offender status - before God. It's not necessary to embrace our faults in order to acknowledge them. It could very well be the best thing that could ever happen to us, to stand before God, with all our shortcomings to set before Him. How do you think He would respond?

Maybe then, we would see ourselves as we truly are - as sheep in need of a shepherd (Psalm 23).