JUST PRACTICING

If the truth were told, I would have to admit that I am a practicing sinner. Well, no use beating around the bush: I am a practicing sinner. I practice sinning every day. But, then, I am not alone. Everyone I know is a practicing sinner. Fortunately and thankfully that is all we are. It could be worse. We could be full-fledged sinners.

The fortunate part is we are still learning how to sin. We have to learn how to sin. Sinning does not come naturally. We were not born sinners. We were born innocent. We learned how to sin and we had some pretty good teachers: our parents, siblings, grandparents. We watched how they sinned and we learned. To be sure, they did not realize they were helping us become learned in the ways of sin and selfishness. They never deliberately set out to teach us to think of ourselves first and others second. But they did and we saw how they did and we learned and now we teach our children, our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbors.

But, again, the fortunate part is that we do not have sinning down pat. A true sinner is one who puts himself or herself above everyone else, including God, and does everything from a purely selfish motive with no concern about the consequences not only to others but also to self, even if those consequences be ones eternal damnation. The truth is, and again very fortunately, we do not even come close.

Yes, there are times when we are mighty selfish and deliberately so. There are times when we choose to be very, very sinful. All sin is by choice, of course. We never sin accidentally. We choose to be selfish, know we are selfish and know what we are saying and doing are wrong. But we do it anyway. That is what it is sinful. Yet we never go so far into ourselves that we exclude everyone else. The thankful part is that we stop short of being totally selfish.

What keeps us on the straight and narrow path, if sometimes only on the brim of the road, is the grace of God. Left to our own devises we could and perhaps would wander off into only God knows where. For that we must be thankful. But it is not simply the grace of God that keeps our sinning to a level we can live with – if we could not live with it, we would cease. It is also the help and support and prayers of our faith community that keep us from becoming unhinged and going off on our own and "to hell with everyone else."

None of this means that because we are all only practicing sinners and not total sinners, only partially selfish and not purely so, that we can be passé about it. We cannot. It does mean, however, we cannot call another a sinner while failing to use the same term to describe ourselves. We must always strive to be less sinful and more loving, which, of course, also takes practice.

            WJP