- How many times can I ask God to forgive the same thing?
- As many times as you need to. There is no counter running. What often happens, though, is that the repeating is doing something other than confessing: it is checking, the way you go back to check a locked door. If you have said it honestly once, the second and fifth and ninth time may be anxiety rather than conscience. Worth telling someone you trust, and worth mentioning to your doctor if it has taken over your days.
- Do I have to forgive someone who has not apologised?
- The New Testament does not make forgiveness conditional on the other person apologising, which is hard, because the apology is what most of us are actually waiting for. But forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. Reconciliation takes two people, honesty, and usually changed behaviour. Forgiveness can be one person deciding to stop carrying a debt that was never going to be paid. You can do the second without the first ever becoming safe or possible.
- Why do I still feel guilty after I have confessed?
- Because feelings and facts run on different clocks. Confession is not a technique for producing relief, and when the relief does not arrive it is easy to decide the confession did not take. Usually it did. Sometimes the guilt stays because a repair is still outstanding and you know it, which is useful information. Sometimes it stays because guilt has become a habit of thought, and that is worth working through with a counsellor or your doctor.
- Do I need to confess to a priest, or is praying on my own enough?
- Christians differ here and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Catholic and Orthodox practice treats sacramental confession as the ordinary way sin is absolved. Most Protestant traditions hold that you can go straight to God, while still valuing confession made to another person. What nearly all of them agree on is that saying it out loud to a human being does something that thinking it alone does not. If your tradition offers that, it is worth using.
- What if I can never say sorry to the person I hurt?
- Sometimes they have died. Sometimes contact would be a second injury to them, and they have asked you to stay away. Sometimes a solicitor has told you not to make contact, and you should take that advice. In those cases the amends is not the conversation. It is the changed behaviour, the money returned where it can be, the honesty with the next person who trusts you. Say the sorry to God, then spend it where it can do some good.
