Confess to the Almighty in your underpants
The kind shepherds over at Flamingo Road Church (grab their daily podcast) in Florida have created a religious website with a twist–ivescrewedup.com is a website on which you can confess your sins and, assuming it is approved by the moderator-ministers, your confession will then appear for the world to see, along with your home town.
The first thing about ivescrewedup.com, which struck me almost immediately, was this: on one hand, the amazingly slick and graphic-heavy website, and on the other, the amazing lack of literacy amongst the flock posting their confessions online. If anything, this website definitely confirms the sad relationship between ignorance and religion, as well as the fact that evangelical churches continue to use the latest technology to proselytize to a media-hungry and gullible audience.
Amongst the litany of grief and suffering were quite a few truly poignant stories, some very tragic indeed, such as the following from someone in South Africa:
I was raped and have HIV. I cannot tell anyone this. My family will hate me. I think I am pregnant. Lord, please send me friend who will understand.
As with any website, there are also the odd tongue-in-cheek pseudo-confessions:
dear lord, im so glad you got the internet, you really are everywhere! now you have restored my belief in you and i will serve you as long as i can
Of course, the other thing to consider is that none of this is actually checked for veracity. In fact, any of the confessions might well be nothing more than the creative fiction of bored teenagers. After all, the main element of Catholic confession, namely atoning for the sin in some ritual fashion, is conspicuously absent in this outpouring-only .com non-denominational confessional. Also, many of the confessions on ivescrewedup.com seem to be more pleas for help than confessions of transgression–perhaps fare better suited for GroupHug, or even the intervention of a trained professional. Ultimately, ivescrewedup.com is an interesting addition to the internet landscape, but it’s more an exercise in occasionally-frightening, flashy evangelical web-marketing than any sort of groundbreaking means of freeing the human spirit to allow communication with some sort of god.
Comments
No comments yet, be the first to add one!