"Of course you don't want to talk about your sin, especially when you're trying to pretend to be a model Christian". This is a quote from a conversation I once had with a good friend of mine. She had just confessed to having struggled with a specific sin, and explained that she doesn't really like to talk about it. She believes it would shatter the image we (her friends) have in our heads about her.
This particular individual is not doing this out of pride, but it does highlight a problem I see within the Church. We're all trying to look like model Christians. We all have a certain expectation that our brethren will avoid certain sins, and when they come out and confess their sins, we suddenly see them differently. Suddenly, that innocent little girl becomes the Whore of Babylon. Tragically, for some people, that's not even an exaggeration.
This is counterproductive. It hinders us from confessing to each other, and sins unconfessed usually go unhealed. If anything, they grow until you no longer need to confess them, because they're visible to the outside world. But there is an antidote.
When this girl told me what she had struggled with, I wasn't shocked. She has always appeared "innocent" to me. I could accuse her of nothing. But I was not shocked, because I already knew she was a sinner, simply because the Bible tells me she is. In 1 John 1:8, we read that anyone who says they have no sin is deceiving themselves, and the truth is not in them, and so regardless of how visible this girl's sins are, I knew they were there, just as I know my own sins are here.
I remember when I was around 17. I was fortunate enough to make contact with the preacher whose show was actually quite instrumental in my conversion. At that point, I was done trying to defend my homosexual lifestyle, but the sin itself still had its claws in me. The only people who knew I was gay at that time were not Christians, and I was desperate to confess and ask for prayer, but I did not do so out of fear of what the Church would think. So I asked this preacher "on behalf of a friend". He saw right through it, and he said to me "hey, I sin too." There was no judgement. There was no hatred. He didn't claim I was going to lose my salvation. He was kind to me, he gave me some advice, and he prayed for me.
We all need to be like that preacher. We all need to recognise our own sin, because in doing so we will be equipped to handle it when our brethren confess their own. We need to recognise that there is no such thing as a "model Christian", because then we can help each other overcome sin.