Treating confession as a statin for sins.

In the 15 August issue of the American Journal of Cardiology, it was apparently reported that a Dr Darrel Francis and his colleagues calculated that the reduction in cardiovascular risk offered by a statin (a drug that acts to reduce the level of fats, including triglycerides and cholesterol in the blood) is enough to offset the increase in heart attack risk from eating a cheeseburger and a milkshake. They’ve worked out that in terms of the likelihood of one having a heart attack, taking a statin can reduce one’s risk to more or less the same degree as a fast food meal increases it. And here is the most uproarious suggestion – they are proposing that fast food outlets provide these statins free with the meal that they serve, and as such, allow their customers to eat with much less risks of heart attacks due to clogged arteries.

A strange piece of apparently irrelevant information in the medical world to be mentioned in my spiritual blog, you may think. After all, what do I know about medicine? I was actually listening to my radio while doing my morning run last week when I heard this commented on by the radio announcer in between songs, and then it dawned upon me that this is precisely the kind of mentality that doesn’t help us much to address what really needs to be addressed in our lives - by a proper attitude, mentality and overall approach.

While Dr Francis and his team did say in their report that it is better to avoid fatty food altogether, this is not what their report centered on. Instead, what they are proposing is that people should be able to eat their burgers and have it (the statins, to be precise). Literally.

In discussions and conversations regarding the Sacrament of Reconciliation and God’s mercy, I have often heard people remarking “It’s a good thing we have confession in the Catholic Church, because we can do what we want, and then after that, go for confession to get absolution”. With this view of God’s mercy and forgiveness, aren’t we a bit like Dr Francis and his team? The only difference is that the latter is connected to our physical health, while the former to our spiritual health.

The graces that we receive from encountering God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation must encourage us to want to make the needed changes in our lives to veer away from sin, to turn away – to be converted. It’s certainly not an excuse to allow us to sin in any carefree way. As Dr Francis pointed out, albeit briefly, it is better to avoid fatty food altogether. Health advocates have always said that it is better to change one’s lifestyle altogether rather than lean on the administration of a drug and think that it’s ok to continue a destructive or far less beneficial lifestyle and harmful eating habit. So too for the spiritual life.

But we seem to be obsessed with a ‘quick-fix’ world, where it is far easier and convenient to pop a pill, buy a diploma, buy on credit, hope for a strike in a visit to a casino, and get a strong and fast with steroids than to do the harder thing in life – change one’s lifestyle, learn by studying, save one’s salary, work hard and train and eat properly to get strong.

Have we as a people become so single-minded in our quest for getting what we want whenever we want and however we want? And when we find our plans and dreams for sustaining our defined happiness stymied, do we find ourselves finding loopholes and other openings just so that we can still get our ‘fix’ rather than look squarely at what may be harming us and say that it is those areas that need fixing instead? That’s whole area of life is called conversion, and I believe that it lies at the heart of every successful dieter, anyone who has truly made headways in making improvements to their health, and of course, anyone who has encountered God’s mercy and made the necessary changes that marks deep spiritual conversion.

Yes, it may be far easier to swallow a statin and eat that cheeseburger, but it would be wishful thinking that we have become healthier people. To be sure, the ability to change and experience true and lasting conversion doesn’t come overnight. It is a repeated “yes” to God and God’s will over and over and over again, with repeated falls and repeated experienced of his mercy and grace.

Just as no one becomes healthy overnight, neither does one become a saint overnight.