Glenn Lucke, Phone Booth Confession

The movie Phone Booth depicts the hollow, emptiness of living a fake life for others’ consumption. Or to say it another way, it depicts the misery of living for false gods.

 A NYC promoter, Stu (Colin Farrell), is held captive in a phone booth at the whim of a sniper with a rifle, a laser scope and a telephone. Unless the promoter confesses his hidden sins to his wife, mistress, and colleagues the sniper will kill him.

So Stu confesses:

“I’ve never done anything for anybody who couldn’t do something for me. I string along an eager kid with promises that I’ll pay him money. I only keep him around because he looks up to me. Adam, if you’re watching, don’t be a publicist…you’re too good for it.

"I lie in person and on the phone. I lie to my friends. I lie to newspapers and magazines who sell my lies to more and more people. I’m just a part of a big cycle of lies…I should be (f------) President. I wear all this Italian (s----) because underneath I still feel like the Bronx.  I think I need these clothes and this watch. My $2000 watch is a fake and so am I.  I neglected the things that I should have valued most. I value this s---   (looking down at his clothes).  I take off my wedding ring to call Pam. Kelly, that’s Pam. Don’t blame her. I never told her if I was married and if I did, she would have told me to go home.

"Kelly, looking at you now I’m ashamed of myself. I mean….I work so hard on this image …. I only proved I should be alone. I’ve just been something I’m not for so long I’m so I’m afraid you won’t like what’s underneath.

"But here I am…I’m just flesh and blood and weakness and uh… I love you so much. (Crying) I take off this ring because it only reminds me of how I’ve failed you. And uh…I don’t want to give you up, I want to make things better…but it may not be my choice anymore. You deserve better.”

 Stu blurts out his whole pantheon of false gods. He names them. He repents. He confesses insecurity, phoniness, manipulation, lies, materialism, and adultery.

And shame. The cycle of shame has been occurring because he hasn’t been able to face his wife, whom he feels is too good for him. So, to deal with his feelings of worthlessness, he has been calling a young actress (Katie Holmes) from a phone booth and taking off his wedding ring during the calls. Full of shame, he turns to mental/emotional adultery, which causes more shame. So he confesses the shame and all the rest in a jaw-dropping scene.

Following Bonhoeffer’s lead, this kind of confession and repentance is supposed to be a normal, regular feature of Life Together. It’s not the only element of Life Together, but it’s a significant element. As Bonhoeffer says, “The man who is alone with his sin is truly alone.”

The Church, as a corporate body, is to do daily life like this scene of confession. Why? Because the Church is filled with people who are, in Luther’s words, simul iustus et peccador. In English, this means simultaneously sinning and justified. If we regularly enacted this scene from Phone Booth, we would honestly and brokenly proclaim our peccador-ness. If we confessed our sinfulness to our spouses, children, parents, friends,  colleagues, neighbors, then others around us wouldn’t feel the pressure to display only  their iustus-ness.

Besides, any (and thus all) justification we have is alien to us. Our true, actual justification before God and others is alien in that it comes from outside of us. Not one smidgen of the righteousness that pleases God comes from us; rather, it is wholly a gift of grace that we are covered in Jesus’ blood and righteousness. So, why are we wasting so much time and energy on displaying our self-righteousness. Why not just live according to Scripture…and boast in weakness?

We are scared to death to boast in our weakness because it violates culture (best foot forward, turn your good side to the camera), but if all of us in the Church would boast in our weakness together, we would become a Gospel-suffused community of honesty, brokenness, repentance, grace, forgiveness and restoration. In short, we would be a community of joyful intimacy.