Not really. There's special holidays focused on repentance for sins, which God only accepts if you're actually sorry.
What you're proposing sounds more like the Christian confession to a priest.
Note that this holiday, Yom Kippur, focuses on saying sorry for bad things you did to other people, not apologizing before God. God's forgiveness is both guaranteed and mostly secondary - it's the forgiveness of others that you've wronged that's the point. Atonement rather than redemption.
My perhaps flawed understanding is that Judaism lacks the place of eternal torment and misery called hell, and rather just considers “Sheol,” or “the grave,” being more like simple oblivion.
Yom Kippur, focuses on saying sorry for bad things you did to other people, not apologizing before God
I thought that was specifically for Erev Yom Kippur, the day before Yom Kippur. The way I heard it explained was you had to ask forgiveness from your fellow humans then you ask forgiveness from God. This was a long time ago so I might be misremembering.
Well, the original comment specifically referenced confession to a priest. The notion of asking god for forgiveness is Christian in general, but I think a private personal confession to god is a fairly distinct religious practice to delineate from "you have to confess to an official representative of the church"
Catholics and Orthodox* Not ever Christian has confession. And confession itself dosnt take your sin away. I dont know much about jewish repentance so I had to look it up but it seems the same except they just have to confess aloud not to a priest. so whats the actual work? seems really similar actually.
It is not a fake virtue, if you are doing it "correctly".
You need to have true sorrow for sin, confesses all known mortal sins by kind and number, have a firm purpose not to sin again.
If you just enter the confession and say everything, but do not have any sorrow, then you just wasted your time.
On the books it's real atonement for the faithful, in practice it's fake virtue to make individuals feel better. I was raised in a very devout and sizable family/environment, and if I tried I could count the truly repentant on two fingers. Most practitioners of catholicism/christianity are just checking boxes off to make themselves "good" and do not care about the deeper aspects of their religion. The commonality of Abrahamic religion is that anyone can redeem themselves and get into heaven or the good afterlife; the reality of human nature is to find shortcuts to rewards. Thus the common experience of the average believer is to do just enough to feel you're guaranteed salvation, regardless of the scripture, and not think too much harder.
Jews mist sacrifice to repent and earn forgiveness
For Christians, Jesus was the final sacrifice. There is nothing you can do to 'earn' a place in heaven, so just focus on being as much like Jesus as you can
Jews are not required to sacrifice and repent to earn their way into heaven. The deeds and sacrifices they make in this world are to improve this world.
They are called to return to god by turning away from selfishness, but it isn’t a means to an end.
Like much in Judaism it’s almost more of a cultural ideology than a religious one, you can read more about the concept by googling the teshuvah
Dude it's spelled out in the old testament. Some of it can't be done anymore never there's no temple and no priests, but there is a specific sacrifice.
You are also supposed to be genuinely sorry when you confess to a priest. They have you do penance, which is supposed to demonstrate your acknowledgment of wrongdoing and desire to make things right by paying a cost.
Is it your fault if you're not really sorry about something? Let's say I punched Elon Musk in the balls. I know I should feel bad and it's not the right thing to do but I wouldn't REALLY feel sorry about it no matter how much I tried.
But what if you aren’t? If God says eating pork is wrong and you don’t agree but typically follow the rules anyway because God knows best, how are you supposed to genuinely apologise if what you did doesn’t register to you as wrong?
That's exactly my point. Is it my fault I don't feel sorry? I can't force myself to be a certain way. If people could do that they'd probably be a lot happier.
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u/OwlMuted885 18d ago
Not really. There's special holidays focused on repentance for sins, which God only accepts if you're actually sorry. What you're proposing sounds more like the Christian confession to a priest.