https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=UeYbNagQz98
What’s the deal with confession? What do you mean, what’s the deal with confession? What is it? Why is it? Why do you go to confession? Yeah, why do you go to confession? It’s great. Don’t you want to go to confession sometimes? With another person? Yeah. Like, to put mine into them? Yeah. Don’t you ever want to do that? Can you trust anybody with that? Isn’t that like making the secret, revealing the secret? Isn’t that like… Well I don’t think so. I mean the priests are bound by their oath. And so they’re bound not to reveal the things you tell them. And so obviously people also choose their confessors. Sometimes they don’t necessarily just go to anybody, but if you choose your confessor and you have a good relationship, then… And also at some point you realize that you’re the same as everybody else, Benjamin. Your sins aren’t special. It’s like your sins are just not special. And so the things that you’re telling the priests are the same types of things that everybody else is telling the priests. We all struggle with the same things. The priests will go to prisons and confess murderers and rapists and all kinds of people. And so if you come with your lies and your desires and your whatever you deal with, then it’s not like it’s a surprise. There’s just an interesting tension there. There’s like a democratization, I hope I got that right, of sin, of dirt, of failing, of imperfection, which releases the hierarchy of that in a way. It’s not about accepting… It’s not about erasing the fault. It’s about accepting the fault. It’s not about saying… For sure the priest will offer absolution. The priest will participate in the forgiveness of your sins. And usually the priest will also give you advice or give you a… I forget what the word in English is… Like something to do. Like if you have a big thing you’re dealing with and they’ll say, you have to do this. Or don’t go to confession for so long. Don’t go to communion for so long. Or whatever. You have to say so many prayers. And it’s mostly about the difficulty… It’s like the difficulty too with our bad habits and our sins and stuff is that if we’re stuck with them on our own, they just run like a pattern, right? And so they keep coming back and coming back and coming back. And so when you go to confession, what it does is it creates a moment… It’s kind of like people who go to AA, you know? It actually creates a specific moment in time where you put your thing out there. And it’s like a weird thing. It’s like a new beginning. You have an opportunity to make it better because you’ve actually created a moment that calls attention to it instead of just letting it run like a pattern. So then you go back and you’re like, okay, it doesn’t mean you’re going to succeed, but it does create these moments. And then if the priest says, you know, you need to do so many prayers or whatever, then it’s actually a discipline that you’ve got which reminds you of this thing, this bad habit that you’ve got or this thing that you’re doing. So it ends up being… It’s actually… I think it’s a better form of therapy than like talking about your problems and finding the source of whatever bad habit you have. It’s better to create it more like this discipline. I think it’s much better and I think it’s more helpful. And also it’s good to have a confessor. You know why? Because it’s like when you have a confessor, one of the things that happens too is that your confessor is like part of you. And so, you know, you’ve got this temptation or whatever, there’s something there. Like you’re going to… You know you’re on the verge of doing something you don’t want to do. And then you remember, it’s like, oh, well, if I do this, I’ve got to confess it. And so it’s like, man… So it adds like a consciousness inside you. It’s almost like you can rely on the strength of someone else. Like some people do that, like even… You know, they have buddy systems for alcoholics. It’s kind of like that where, you know, when you’re really tempted to drink, you have someone that is maybe part of AA and you just have their phone number, you call them and you’re like… And you know that if I drink, I have to tell them. Like if I fall off the wagon or whatever, I have to tell these people. And so it adds one more layer of discipline that actually is external that helps you to deal with some of your stuff.