Would you ever tweet, blog, or Facebook your sins? Is social media the place for confession and atonement?
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement for Jews, occurred last week. Yom Kippur is the day of repentance for past sins, to seek forgiveness, and to make amends. NPR featured a fascinating twist on this holy day. A synagogue in Miramar, Florida invited congregants to use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to share their wrongs. Cantor Debbi Ballard explains how social media can connect her congregation to confession and restoration:
…let’s use the technology and have it enhance our atonement today by tweeting or texting our sins away, and looking at those sins on a big movie screen. And then letting them roll past us so that we can let them go, so that we can live a more powerful life this year. I think that’s what Yom Kippur and atonement is about.
It may seem odd for some to share their “sins” on social media. Who wants to leave their confession in a world that caches and stores your information for the world to see? Ballard explains the value of interactive and communal confession:
Because when you really can acknowledge, you know, I need to say I’m sorry to my sister ’cause I hurt her feelings. When you acknowledge it – when you put it out there, when you see it on a screen [via Twitter or Facebook], it makes it more real. It makes it more doable. That you can atone… I am not saying that just saying that you should say you’re sorry to your sister is your full salvation. I am just saying that it’s the first step.
For many, this idea is out of bounds. Sharing one’s wrongs in public, especially online, is too personal. Using social media for atonement for sins isn’t a replacement for reconciliation but merely a tool that can put people on the right path. Out of all the things that I counsel people about it is forgiveness that folks have the most trouble with. Why not use social media to help?
One of the more recent-ish and radical concepts that pushed the idea of confession into new territory came from Don Miller in his book Blue Like Jazz. In the book, Miller sets up a reversal confessional booth where Christians confessed their sins to anyone who would listen. The results provided for powerful spiritual transformation for those involved. Social media atonement and confession cannot really replace the need for face to face interaction.
Social media atonement and confession provides a tool for a generation of people who are looking for nontraditional ways of connection to God and to others. Going to Facebook or Twitter to begin the conversation of confession, forgiveness, restoration, and atonement can give a freeing experience for our social media generation.
Would you ever take to social media for confession, forgiveness, or atonement?