What’s your excuse?
What excuse do you use to justify the choices you make and actions you take that lead you to sin? If you’re like the rest of us, you excuse boils down into one of two basic responses. Either we think to ourselves – or say to others – “I’m entitled”; or else we claim as our defense, “Everybody else is doing it!”
It’s pride that leads us to think we’re entitled to have or do what we want. It’s pride that leads us to think we are better than others, more deserving, more important. It is pride that leads the Pharisee to consider himself to be a better person, and so more deserving of God’s blessings, than he thinks the Publican should receive. It was pride that led Lucifer, the highest of all the angels, to think himself equal to his Creator, and so to rebel against God; and it was pride that he stirred up in Adam and Eve to lead them into sin and death. Sin and death are the only place to which following pride can lead us.
The virtue that opposes pride is humility. How much different would our relations be with every other person in our lives, known or unknown, casual or deep, if we were humble, instead of proud? Husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors – how much different would our world be if we learned only to see and condemn our own sins, and to be blind to the sins of others, so as not to judge them? How much different would our lives, and our world, be if we took responsibility for what we have said and done and thought and felt, and forgave others without waiting to be asked, and considered everyone else to be more worthy, more honorable, more deserving than we are ourselves? The path to this humility begins by our striving to be like the Publican, not drawing near to God as if we were worthy, but bowing down in His presence, and beating our breasts, and saying, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
As for the excuse, “Everyone else is doing it,” we don’t need to turn to the Fathers for instruction here – because I’m sure you’ve already heard from your mother about this one! “What if everybody is jumping off the cliff? Are you going to jump off also?” That’s what my mother always said when I tried to justify doing something I knew was wrong, or to escape the consequences for having done so. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the excuse that “everyone else is doing it” is, in fact, already an admission of guilt – and we’re trying to spread our part of it out against everyone else – as if doing something wrong could be set aside because enough people did the same thing. Even when it might work out that way in the world, God doesn’t work that way – and we know it.
Brothers and sisters, we cannot prove ourselves worthy in the eyes of God, for there is nothing we can do by ourselves to overcome our passions and our sins. When we live by our own strength and wisdom, when we live by the ways of the world and our flesh, we are living as if we are spiritually dead – and so we are. Having been baptized into Christ, let us put on Christ, and dedicate ourselves to making His life and His ways known in and through our own. He humbled Himself, and so should we. He was obedient to God the Father, and so, too, should we. He loved everyone and brought hurt or harm to no one – and so, too, should we.
In the week to come, we do not fast, so that we cannot stand with the Pharisee and boast of what we have done. Let us strive to be like the Publican; let us strive to be like our Lord Jesus Christ: humble, obedient, and loving – to the glory of God, and the salvation of our souls.
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