Reflecting on sports scandals surrounding sprinter Marion Jones and cyclist Floyd Landis, Washington Post writer Shankar Vedantam writes:
Talk about cheating usually has a ring to it, and that ring comes from having a high moral tone. In this, it is fair to say, most people are hypocrites.
Vendantam’s piece, Cheating is an Awful Thing for Other People to Do, muses on the many studies that show how easily people lie and cheat and how readily we excuse ourselves when the alternative means losing face or enduring discomfort.
University of Kansas psychologist C. Daniel Batson tells The Post, "We have a whole quiver full of rationalizations. We’re very good at explaining to ourselves why we are doing something." The inference is that rationalizing is an expression of regret, however faint, that we can’t perform as well as we would like – indeed, as well as we would "under normal circumstances."
"When you are talking about a moral issue," Batson says, "it is something we feel we ought to do. So we are in a bind of wanting to what we don’t want to do."
Mr. Batson gets what the apostle Paul wrote about to the Christians at Rome:
I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.
But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
— Romans 7:14-25 The Message Bible
From time to time we – maybe I should just say I – have been known to strike an indignant tone in this space. And I have to admit that sometimes it’s been a tone of self-righteous indignation as distinct from the other kind.
The only way I can get away with this is by focusing on things that don’t tempt me. It’s a spin on the old fundamentalist position that no one should have sex standing up because it might lead to dancing. As I remember it, the people who were most against dancing where I grew up weren’t that interested in dancing to begin with and could think of no holy reason anyone would be.
They did however exhibit a keen interest in food and I don’t recall any of them speaking out on the subject gluttony. It was self-evident in my formative years that where two or three were gathered together in Jesus name there would be dessert at a minimum. I admit dabbling on the dance floor in the exuberant days of youth but religion won out in the end and I became, let us say, extra large for many years.
If I only talk about what tempts other people I don’t have to admit that I’ve done all the bad things I’ve been seriously and persistently tempted to do. And that doesn’t begin to touch all the good things I have failed to do because they are difficult or distasteful or fear inducing.
I’m convinced I have to find a way to speak the truth as well as I comprehend it without being that guy who is hard on others and easy on himself. But, like so much of life, sober judgement happens one day at a time.
I find myself thinking about the story of a dirty-dealing businessman who had a face to face with Jesus (Luke 19:1-10). Luke says the man Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus gladly and demonstrated how happy he was by giving half his assets to the poor and repaying people he’d cheated four times the amount he skinned them for.
It’s a good story and more than a little challenging – to me at least. It’s also an incomplete story. Luke moves on to other things and we’re left to imagine the rest for ourselves.
What I wonder is, was Zacchaeus what was called "a changed man" when I was a kid or was he still tempted to put his thumb on the scale from time to time?
I’m betting the answer is, both. I’m betting he had his ups and downs – his good days and his learning days – just as the apostle Paul admits to the Romans and just like me and everyone else I know beyond the surface. None of which excuses even occasional bad behavior but it certainly puts it context.
Unlike cycling or track & field, business is a contact sport. The life in business is by nature an endless stream of micro-decisions between serving people or taking advantage of them – and rationalizations for the latter are very easy to come by. Thank God Jesus keeps acting to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
