Justification; just as if you’ve never sin

“An explanation of course is not a reason for justification”, C.S Lewis said.When we are supposed to be doing something we don’t do, often we have to argue with ourselves inside.  A man has to give himself a reasonable reason for what he does or fails to do, and if the reason isn’t a good reason, it may involve an uncomfortable contest between two sides of himself.  This is true in all our obligations and activities.

When we don’t live up to the best we know, when we don’t deliver the best we can, when we aren’t present where we are supposed to be present, when we aren’t doing what we ought to be doing, we have to keep telling ourselves why; and this kind of conversation takes off the edge of every enjoyment—like a brooding, threatening cloud that hovers over a picnic, like intrusive noise in the background when we are trying to listen to music, like an interrupting voice when we are trying to engage in quiet conversation.

An uneasy conscience is a discordant obbligato that detracts from all sweet sounds.  A man, simply cannot keep his mind on his work with full effectiveness when he has to keep telling himself why he doesn’t do what he knows he ought to do, why he doesn’t go where he knows he ought to go, why he doesn’t keep appointments he knows he ought to keep, why he disappoints people he knows he ought not disappoint, why he lets small causes and small excuses dissuade him from more important pursuits.

Actually, it often takes more time to talk ourselves into and out of the things we ought to do than it has to do them.  And often we actually save time and greatly increase our effectiveness and efficiency if we simply decide to do what we know we ought to do and then set about to do it.

To all of us and to young people particularly, let it be said again: Being where you ought to be when you ought to be there, doing what you ought to do when you ought to do it is one of the indispensable factors of success, of effectiveness and efficiency, and of personal peace.  It avoids the necessity of inside argument and often takes less time than the time we take telling ourselves why it is all right not to do what we know we ought to do.

It is one thing to do wrong and another thing to justify wrongdoing.  It seems that there is almost nothing in which men cannot justify themselves in their own eyes, if they set about to do so.  The embezzler, for example, seldom steals money in his own mind or admission.

He simple borrows, perhaps with the hope of putting it back.  And the thief says to himself that he is simply taking what, in some rationalised way, should have been his anyway.

Perhaps he says he is simply collecting a debt that somehow society owes him.  And the swindler seldom swindles.  He is simply working with his wits—or he may say to himself that his victim wouldn’t have used the money wisely anyway.

Thus, by a process of self-deception, by singing sweet songs to an accusing conscience, it is possible to find apparently plausible excuses for almost any questionable action or utterance.  Sometimes men seek to conceal their real motives by saying to themselves that they are doing what they are doing for some ultimately worthy reason.

In other words, while what they are doing may be wrong, they tell themselves that the ultimate end they have in mind is altogether right, and so the end justifies the means which is a desperately dangerous doctrine.

Furthermore, the person who continually justifies himself in doing what we shouldn’t do finds it difficult to repent.  In fact, repentance is virtually impossible without a willingness to admit a mistake.  And improvement is virtually impossible without a willingness to concede faults and inefficiencies.

Evil and error have an easy time where there is a disposition to indifference or where there are no shocked sensibilities.  But perhaps evil and error make their easiest advances in a situation of self-justification.  And bad as they are in and of themselves, the disposition to justify them may be worse for, publicly or privately, the recognition of wrong, the admission of a mistake, is a prerequisite to repentance and improvement.

By Samuel Enos Eghan