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1 " Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution...Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. "
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer , Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
2 " ...the issue becomes not whether a person has experience with a stigma of his own, because he has, but rather how many varieties he has had his own experience with. "
― Erving Goffman , Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
3 " Not a single man on earth knows from his own experience the how and where of his birth, only from tradition, which is often very uncertain. "
4 " The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings. "
