Thought of the Day 02.25.10

We’re all inclined to believe that people like Tiger Woods and the man who flew his plane into the IRS building in Texas are in a completely different moral category from us. But the Bible reveals that these men are in fact just like us. They’re merely farther along our common trajectory.

Some people just can’t see things this way. The suggestion is so absurd as to not even be offensive. (You have to believe something a little to find it offensive.) They probably think I’m exaggerating for effect rather than making a serious point. “Oh, Christians just say that, but they don’t really mean it.” The possibility of what the Bible teaches here is so literally too threatening to their psychological structure to even consider. But it is precisely the self-deception of believing that I am incapable of behaving atrociously (even under the wrong circumstances) which prepares me to behave atrociously when those (or other) wrong circumstances come about.

You see, all men suffer from delusions of their own moral grandeur, delusions only reinforced by believing that bright line category distinctions exist between us and them. “I never thought I would have done anything like that,” is the universal lament of the man who used to be completely sure that, “There but for the strength of my own character and willpower go I.”