Pensees: Dreams and Confessions

Dreams and Confessions

I’m starting a new category: confessions. Ever since the eleventh year of my life I have journaled off and on. If I am sufficiently removed from the date/event and if I think that I might be able to share (with editorial tweaking) my confessions in an non-exhibitionist way, I will post it here for your edification (or amusement).

I am strange, I know, to say that bad dreams are, for me, God-given opportunities to get a real glimpse at the sinfulness of my soul. I never dream a sin without waking and earnestly confessing it to the Lord. My theory is that Jesus would not have dreamed that dream. My conviction is that we should confess not only what we do, but what we are. Bad dreams, sinful dreams, reveal — I think — something about us. Bad dreams, sinful dreams, have been an instrument of humiliation, a tool of grace, in my walk with the Lord. Several years ago, I penned this confession in my journal.

The Journal

Bizarre dreams can be useful to give greater apprehension of our nature and work humility in us. I dreamed last night that a brother (he was faceless) and I broke into a bank, did not succeed, fled the scene, and then returned to watch the investigation. The small town (was it Mayberry?) was incensed, knew it to be the work of outsiders, and began to discover by process of elimination that the criminals were my faceless brother and me because they had seen our car near the scene. We did not break in for money, but for the sheer thrill of breaking the law. I began to feel (in my dream) a strong impulse to turn ourselves in since we were going to be found out anyway, thereby reducing the penalty for my crime if possible. My faceless brother vehemently resisted my self-serving proposal because he stood to lose most. I had actually not entered the bank. I was an accomplice. He was the the perpetrator, and now I was scheming to turn us in that I might take as little responsibility for the crime as possible and as much credit as possible for the resolution. Then I awoke.

The heinousness of my innate sin cause me to cry out to God for deliverance from this wretched body of decay. There had not been at any point in my dream true purity of motive, true love for the Law of God, or true love for my brother. The passion of my soul to exonerate myself at the expense of my brother’s life showed the murderous nature of my indwelling sin.

O, blessed salvation that delivers us to the uttermost.