Marjorie Thompson proposes that genuine confession can be contrasted with counterfeit confession in two primary ways: [i]
| Genuine Confession | Counterfeit Confession | |
| Focus | God | Failures |
| Result | Humility | Anxiety or Pride |
The problem with counterfeit confession is that it leads to one of two destructive fruits: anxiety or pride. The more our attention is drawn only toward our failures, the more easily we fall into anxiety. We begin to fret because we seem so unworthy of God’s love. We start to despair because we see how flawed we truly are.
Counterfeit confession can also lead to pride. We may actually become conceited because of our confession. That is, we may grow proud at the way we’ve learned to be honest with God “(Look at me God. I admit my flaws frequently. I’m not like that Pharisee who could only admit the flaws of others!”). We may also become proud, in a strange way, of our sin. It can become a kind of badge of honor (“No one struggles with this as much as I do. No one has such a burden of sin like mine!”). Pride or anxiety is the result of counterfeit confession.
True confession, however, never bears these two deadly fruits. Its focus is on God rather than on us. It meditates much more on the Father than on our faults. It contemplates God’s favor rather than just our fiascos. And as a result, true confession bears the fruit of genuine humility that neither lifts us too high nor drops us too low. In true confession we receive an accurate portrait of who we are. But we also receive a correct image of who God is.
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[i]Adapted from Marjorie Thompson, Soul Feast (Westminster John Knox, 1995), 96-97.
