Dr dear Dr: Is it really allowable to confess a sin and then to fall into the same sin the following week, with the result that one is repeating one’s previous confession? Does God make allowances for this?

Actually there is a new and refreshing Shaolin proverb from the rivers and hills and deserts of the modern China, in which the Shaolin monks remind us of their famous wisdom sayings such as -

1. Consider the ways of the worlds and the rumours of wars that trouble the modern world, that troubled the ancient world too, but to see what is going to transpire, it is enough to go down to the rushes by the river near the monastery and feel the breeze in the rushes, that is how to tell the future.

2. Consider the Shaolin monk must make his way through the world of men and women like a monk walks on rice paper, leaving no trace of his footprint, that is the way to walk through the world and the loud and noisy affairs of men and women in the outside world.

3. Note number 3, if one were to dip one’s toe into the same river twice within a few minutes, would it still be the same river, would it be the same experience even if it is the same river?

4. Consider the affairs of men in which many younger men walk away nay run away from their internal troubles and their clouds of the dark within, but a Shaolin monk must grasp the nettle of his fears tightly, for the nettle does not sting when gripped tightly by a firm hand, so too the Shaolin monk in the shadowy places of his own heart.

Anyway, these are wisdom sayings of the Shaolin monk, and the one that interests us in this Response to the reader and enquirer is the one numbered no 3, in which it is true to say that the river is never the same in the same spot when the toe is dipped, and so too though it seems to the unknowing heart that he or she is confessing the same sin each time, still the motives for it will be different each time and the nature of the act too will be different arising from different fonts and sources.

So instead of dealing just with the whats of a confession of sins, try dealing with the hows and whys of that confession and then one will see if one is seeking self-awareness in the confessional, that the second time and third time are indeed different and the sin is not the same act.

Dipping the toe in twice, it is a different river, because we are not machines that have a constancy principle built in, but rather biochemical water-based products of evolution, so our acts from day to day will only appear to be the same to the superficial mind, in fact each day will be different and each act will be different. Because we are fluid beings no two acts will be the same not even on consecutive days. Know thyself, sayeth the Greeks too.