"The very skirts of your robe are stained
with the blood of the poor,
of innocent men you never caught breaking and entering!
And in spite of all this,
you say, 'I am innocent,
let his anger turn from me!'
Now I pass sentence on you
for saying, 'I have not sinned.'
Jeremia 2:34-35 (NJB)

I was struck by the implications when I read this several months ago and have been meaning to post on it ever since. God's judgment here is on those who sin but claim false justification for their actions. It is a fact which all the saints in history seem aware of but which our modern age seems have been forgotten. Quite simply, sin blinds us to reality. Specifically, it blinds us to the reality of our own sinful nature and our need for reconciliation to God.

Now, we used to understand that someone who was unable to accurately perceive reality had problems. We had methods for treating such people involving counseling and sometimes pharmacuticals. But now, our society claims that there is no problem because there is no "real" reality. This spiritual blindness leads into three overlapping trends.

Truly, the overarching sin of our day is pride. Pride that makes us believe we are better than we are, and thus we come to disbelieve in our own sinfulness. In this passage, it is not the sin of murder that God condems so much as the refusal to accept that what was done was wrong and thus something to be guilty about.

More deeply, pride prevents us from seeking God's forgiveness. When we refuse to see our sins as sins, when we justify our guilt away, we inevitably end up spurning God because he convicts us of our sins. And once we begin to set our own reason against the reality of sin that God reveals to us via our conscience, we fast end up with our souls so corrupted that our conscience, no longer perceptive to God's law, in malformed and no longer any good as a guide.

Ultimately, whether spoken, hinted at, or buried in the dark recesses of the prideful mind, the question arises; since we are not guilty, what need have we of redemption? And if we are not in need of a redemption, do we really need a redeemer? The crazy sinner who can no longer see the reality of sin clearly will slowly reduce their relationship with the God who redeemed them on a cross, to an acquaintance who had a lot of good advice.

And of course, that advice is only as good as we say it is. Because if we do not need God's forgiveness, if we are always without fault in our own eyes, then we will eventually replace God's commandments with our selfish desires. Those commandments are easy to say but rather hard to actually put into practice. The saints knew this, but in our day difficulties and sacrifices are viewed with the same level of approval as stepping barefoot in the neighbor dog's pile left in our yard.

"Thou shall not kill"? All well and good until the cure for disease is dangled before us and then, well, its not like the embryo/fetus is a person right? Besides, the old man/disabled child wouldn't want to live like this/that anyway, its such a burden on us/them. Its not really murder...its mercy. Or, "Love your enemy"? Well, of course, unless its that stupid Republican/Democrat (liberal/right-wing) idiot who is pontificating against my beloved hobby horse. Its ok to assign evil motives to them because we all know how evil all Republican/Democrat (liberal/right-wing) idiots are and there is really no point in trying to engage them in civil debate.

Such is the thinking of those who hold themselves blameless. And, being without fault, they rush to cast the first stone. But no one who loves their neighbor could casually disregard the dignity of the weakest. If we love our neighbor, indeed if we love anyone, we ourselves will welcome them, visit them, comfort them. And here is the kicker...our actions do not depend one whit on what others are doing. The fact that some women will always kill their unborn children does not change our duty to fight to overturn any law that makes abortion easier. And while fighting the good fight, we are not excused from our duty to welcome, visit, and comfort.

Its funny, but when we stop seeing our own guilt, it becomes blindingly obvious how guilty everyone else is. To paraphrase Chesterton, 'we seem only to readily forgive those sins that we really don't consider sins'.

I have never (to date) heard anyone argue that "the Church is against torture, and I follow the Churches teaching, but not everyone has the same moral imperative against torture and that is why I am against signing the treaties on torture. Of course, I would never torture anyone myself, but I am sure that those who carry out waterboarding did so only after much agonized deliberation. And I wholeheartedly support a worldwide effort to educate those societies who cut people's heads off with dull knives on the optional methods of obtaining information or making a point." I have also never heard; "I feel that we should stop trying to ban the death penalty at the state level until we can reach a concensus on the issue and pass a constitutional amendment recognizing the personhood of convicted felons." Those who are not called to an apostalate in those areas have not been vocally condeming the efforts who are. At least not yet.

In the end, if our ultimate purpose is not to love, know, and serve God; then we will ultimately make ourselves into gods whose ultimate purpose is to to please and serve ourselves. And if we do not strive to follow God's commandment, then we will finally come to creating commandments out of our desires. If we are without need of forgiveness, why should we forgive others? Right and wrong are easy to determine from the sidelines, but what will keep us from crossing that line if there is no higher authority than our immediate feelings? And when we cross that line, who is to say we are wrong now? We were blind before, but now we see? Do we see the reality of God, or Satan's deception? It is easy to see why the pagan cultures are so often barbaric. Its harder to see why we would want to imitate them. But then, as a fellow blogger likes to say: sin makes you stupid.