GRIEVED

I haven't posted about the recent headlines regarding a very public Christian leader's now very public mistakes because I'm grieved. I should be. Blessed are those who mourn, who don't make jokes or place blame but simply mourn that sin exists...in us all, and that all sin in any Christian's life is truly tragic because it ultimately damages the God they represent.

My friend Dwight Edwards said it best in his book Revolution Within when he wrote, "The great tragedy and heinousness of our sin is not primarily the destruction it brings to our lives but the crippling it brings to God's name. Whenever a believer sins - whether it be the godless hedonism of license or the cold hardness of legalism - the worst result is that the glory of God is for that moment obscured; His name is made to limp. When our conduct nullifies our profession of God's greatness, when our lives fail to reflect the presence of resurrection power, we profane God's name."

My smallest sins deserve outrage of the magnitude the sins of public figures often receive. Measured against the sins we call the worst, mine weigh the same. They result in the same tragedy: the humiliation of God. Any commentary made about anyone else's sin is a commentary on my own. I grieve it like my own. And that's really all I can do about it right now.