In 2021, now head of CBS news, Bari Weiss burnished her already formidable journalistic reputation with a story on just how scandalous D.E.I. had become in one of L.A.’s “elite” prep schools. Yesterday, we linked to a story out of that self-same prep school about a race-based scandal that has recently erupted. On its face this juxtaposition proves the truth of what is likely Chief Justice Roberts wisest utterance, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” But I think there is more to this story.
I began my undergraduate career at an “elite” school – Vanderbilt University. I did not finish there. The reasons are complex and deeply personal, but I will note that academic performance was not one of them. In these events I learned that the quality of education a student receives has far more to do with the student than the institution providing the education. I learned that “elite” status is just that – a status – granted largely on the basis of the institution’s rolodex rather than the education it provides. “Elite” status has far more to do with image than reality.
Institutions that rely on image for status tend to guard that image jealously. Which means that when crisis or scandal strikes their first impulse is to control the information about the scandal or crisis rather than deal with the scandal or crisis. And thus problems go unsolved. Those same problems raise their heads later, often in an even uglier form. It is a vicious cycle.
The Catholic Church views confession sacramentally, but it often goes unpracticed by many Catholics. The evangelical church barely engages in the practice anymore having swallowed whole the psychology-based notion that it creates humiliation and shame – both of which are viewed as emotionally toxic.
But what we see in the very secular examples we began with is that problems cannot be solved without first looking at them square in the face. And that is all confession is, admitting a problem and looking at it squarely as the starting point of fixing it. Shame, properly viewed, is incentive to fix the problem – not toxin, but cure. Humiliation is little more than over-reaction to shame, unless administered by the cruel in which case the problem is theirs, not yours.
This same mechanism is how social media – all about image – has become so toxic in our culture. People worry more about their image than their reality and thus reality gets uglier and uglier.
Regardless of what church you go to this morning, find time to practice confession in some form. God offers you a way through your problems, but only if you acknowledge them to begin with.
