Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a master-class on the human heart. Cloaked in biblical iconography—David and Bathsheba, the Madonna and child, the Garden of Eden, Proverbs 31—the author probes with surgical patience. His work is painful, as most heart surgery is.
Set in colonial Massachusetts, the story revolves around Hester Prynne, her daughter Pearl, and the Puritan minister Reverend Dimmesdale. Hester is guilty of fornication. Pearl is Exhibit A. For her crime, Miss Prynne is doomed to wear the scarlet letter, and she and Pearl are ostracized from society.
Then there’s Dimmesdale. He’s guilty of something, too—I’m not going to say of what. (No spoilers!) But the important thing is not so much what the Reverend did, but how he deals with it.
The guilt of his sin eats away at him, and many times he tries to publicly confess it before his congregation:
“He had told his hearers that he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity . . . Could there be plainer speech than this? Would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled? Not so, indeed! They heart it all, and did but reverence him all the more.”
Confession is the answer. But Dimmesdale’s vague apology filled with vague theological language about vague sinfulness is not confession.
And how often do we do the same?
Our vague “confessions” are really about getting rid of our guilt rather than bringing our sin into the light (1 John 1:5-10). Dimmesdale is a brilliant “confessor”—indeed, a sophisticated hypocrite: “He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood.”
This hypocrisy only increases his guilt. So he turns to flagellation, fasting to the point of starvation, and robbing himself of sleep. Does any of it help? He withers—body and soul.
Looking at Dimmesdale is like looking into a mirror. We know we must confess to be cleansed, but we lack the courage to do it. So we try to make atonement before God by beating ourselves up. In the end, fear of others holds us captive while guilt rots us from within.
In Hawthorne’s novel, it is Hester Prynne who has discovered the irony of confession: God has transformed the prison door into the portal to freedom. Confession, the very thing that once brought condemnation, now brings forgiveness and cleansing (1 John 1:9).
When our consciences plague us, there is only one gracious cure.
Aren’t they cute? I love Davis’s hair. This is from a “100th Day of School” celebration several years ago where I made one of my favorite guilty pleasures: Bonuts. I made these this morning for my Algebra II class, so I thought I’d share. But what exactly is a bonut?
Bonut (noun): a biscuit doughnut
Essentially, make your favorite biscuit recipe, but instead of baking them, fry em and glaze em. So, if you can deal with the guilt of eating fried, glazed biscuits, this is the recipe for you!
Glazed Bonuts
Ingredients:
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
12 tbps cold butter cut into cubes
2 c buttermilk
frying oil
2-3 c powdered sugar
Make it:
On your stove, heat an inch or two of frying oil in a dutch oven over medium heat (I used bacon grease this morning!)
Stir together dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
Rub the cubed butter into the dry ingredients until incorporated.
Using a rubber spatula, stir buttermilk into the bowl until dough is moistened. Do not overstir!
Dump dough onto lightly-floured counter, and flatten to 1/2-3/4 inch.
Cut dough into sticks, doughnut shapes, doughnut holes, etc. NOTE: Do not try to fry full-sized biscuits! The centers will not cook through. I use concentric biscuit cutters of two sizes to cut doughnut shapes.
Once oil is hot, fry bonuts until deep golden brown on both sides, flipping half-way. Drain on cooling rack and paper towels.
Mix powdered sugar with enough water to form a glaze consistency. Once bonuts are cool to the touch, dip one side in glaze and place glaze-side up to dry.
Enjoy while they’re warm with some coffee!