The hardest thing is admitting I’m broken. As a child, when a toy breaks we are quick to ask an adult to help, by fixing it. At some point, the adult then begins discipline for why we broke the toy. We begin to hide the broken things because we don’t want to face the shame that we broke it. We tell stories of how ‘someone else did it’ trying to cover for our brokenness. The hardest thing is confessing “I’m broken”. Jesus came for the broken. He spent most of his time with the broken and outcast. The church is a place for the spiritually broken, a place of confession and absolution (and not just in the liturgy!), honesty and grace.
Luke 18:9-14
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”