Waterfights and the dangers of sin
If you’ve been in a waterfight, you might have used the following strategy:
1. Do ‘run-by’ attacks, seeking to avoid getting wet as long as possible.
2. Accept that getting wet may become necessary in order to soak your preferred target.
3. Resign yourself to the fact that you’re about to be soaked, and use that fact to your advantage: kamikaze attacks rule.
We can approach sin in a similar fashion. We’ll avoid it wherever possible, flirt with it a bit, and then just plain give in. It’s why confession is such an important thing to do on a regular basis: making sure that we don’t get so ‘wet’ that we stop caring (like in a waterfight) about how stained our souls might get.
On Friday, at Mass, we heard the story of David and Bathsheba from 2 Samuel 11-12. I’ve always found this story fascinating because it has more twists than an episode of 24- and I also think that it’s a lesson in getting ‘soaked’ in sin, beginning with small compromises and leading to bigger and bigger sins.
David does not begin this story with the intent to commit adultery and murder. No, he starts out by being lazy. This is the time of year that kings are supposed to go to war: David stays home. (Mistake #1.) Next, David finds himself bored – after all, his closest friends are all off fighting a war on his behalf – so David is walking on his palace roof and notices a beautiful woman having a bath. Instead of respecting her integrity as a person, he stares at her, and decides he wants her (Mistake #2: this is not love, but David embracing lust.) So he sends for her (Mistake #3: he chooses to sin), and gets her pregnant. Oh, and this woman happens to be Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah – one of David’s soldiers who is off at war.
This is the moment David has to own up for what he’s done. ”I screwed up, I was lazy, lustful, and I slept with my friend’s wife.” Instead, he decides to cover it up (mistakes 4, 5, 6, and 7.) He brings Uriah home from war, hoping he’ll go home to his wife (4)… but Uriah’s honor won’t let him be with his wife while his fellow soldiers are in battle – if only David had shown that kind of honor! David gets him drunk and tries again (5.) When that doesn’t work, David sends him back to the war and arranges for him to be put in a dangerous place and left to die (6.) Then, he takes Bathsheba as his own wife, so it would look like he was doing a poor, pregnant widow a favor (7.)
From laziness to murder… it wasn’t as huge a step as it would first seem. If we are taking our spiritual lives seriously, we need to look at these little sins – the ones we so easily rationalize away – and weed them out of our lives, so they don’t lead us to more serious sins, like they did for David. David didn’t stay home from war with the intent of impregnating his friends wife and then murdering him so he could take her as his own; he stayed home because he was lazy. His pride – his unwillingness to admit he made a mistake – would cost him dearly. Psalm 51 was written by a contrite David, who had been called out by the prophet Nathan. Here’s the first few verses:
Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness; in your abundant compassion blot out my offense.
Wash away all my guilt; from my sin cleanse me.
For I know my offense; my sin is always before me.
Against you alone have I sinned; I have done such evil in your sight That you are just in your sentence, blameless when you condemn.
When I look at my own life and my own shortcomings, I can see how the bigger sins are usually the result of small ‘compromises’ – in some cases, moments where I’ve allowed myself to become just a little bit wet, and then been willing to risk getting soaked for juts a little bit more. No young couple who are striving for chastity decide to throw their virginity out the window: they make small compromises. They kiss passionately just a little bit longer… they ‘fall asleep’ together on a couch… they put themselves in a situation where they might fall into sin. And then, they rationalize that it wasn’t their fault: they just couldn’t stop themselves. As it did with David, the cycle of sin began with a small compromise much earlier.
If you want to be holy – and we all should - we need to be honest with yourself about these little compromises, and weed them out of our lives. We need to resist sin, and flee from the near occasion of it: and stop rationalizing, stop compromising, and stop giving up simply because it’s hard. Anything worth doing is hard- especially holiness.
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