Confession of Social Sin

Above:  The World During World War II

Image Source = Hammond’s New Era Atlas of the World (1945)

Scan by Kenneth Randolph Taylor

Prayer Source = Book of Worship (1942), Evangelical and Reformed Church

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If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquity, O Lord, who would stand?  Enter not into judgment with thy servants, for in thy sight is no man living justified.

In thy presence, our Father, our disguises and pretenses do not avail, and under the light of thy holiness we know ourselves for what we are, mean and petty creatures who seek our own in spite of our noble pretensions.  Have mercy upon us.  Give us the grace to see our faults more clearly that we may truly repent.

We confess the sorry confusion of our common life to thee.  The nations are still at war with one another, each nation seeking its own advantage.  Our national life is burdened with the sin of injustice.  Millions live in insecurity and poverty while others spend their substance in riotous living.  Those who possess authority love power more than justice and use their fellow-men as tools of their own desires.  The cry of the needy arouses us only slightly from our selfish indifference.

We acknowledge that the world’s sin is our own, that the greed which we condemn when it results in obvious inhumanity in our own heart; that the world is unjust because none of us love justice with sufficient abandon; that the vices of civilization are compounded of the lusts of all of us.  Give us grace to look into our own hearts before we cast a stone of condemnation.

May we achieve the grace of true humility in thy presence so that we may cease to defeat thy will for the world by our self-will.  May the vision of what we might be convict us of what we are, so that thy mercy may redeem us of our sin; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.