That the church considers “mortal”; in other words, sins which commend one specifically to hell. There is, most churches teach, no sin beyond redemption, but you must come to the redemption via your own contrition.

The only sin that I have ever been concerned about- (And believe me, I have sampled from pretty much all of them) is despair. For those that didn’t have the benefit of six sweltering years in the seminary, Despair is the voluntary act of abandoing your faith. (I like when people say “My faith has left me!” No, it cannot. You left it. And it’s right where you left it, waiting for you to pick it up again) Despir is the moment when you choose to accept the lie that there is nothing left you can do, and you should give up.

Witness Job. Like the young America, he had a wonderful life, and his was a moral and upright existence, a faith so complete that the Creator of the Universe gave Satan the power to test Job in every way, to try to make Job curse the name of the Lord.

And he never did.

Because he knew that the real power was the Creator’s to wield, and nothing could happen to Job, he knew, that was permanent or fatal. Had Job given in to despair, had he assumed that Satan was more powerful than the Creator, he would have been lost. His unshakable faith that the Creator had the last word and would always have the last word made all the difference. We may not understand everything that is happening to us these days, but only the faithless give up.

A lot of people I know are infected with what I call the “Veruca Salt” virus, which makes them want their change and want it now. We do tend to be a culture of instant gratification.

Since none of us were here for the revolutionary war, we have no personal memory of the amount of time it took for that sea change in Liberty to take place. It wasn’t overnight. And we didn’t get to where we are overnight. And there will be no savior that gets us out of this hole we are in overnight- Jesus came here two thousand years ago, and people are STILL fighting over the correct interpretation of his word.

I will stand before my Creator someday, as will we all. I will hang my head in shame as my sinful life is replayed. But I will be there, because at no point in my life will I ever have made the assertion either aloud or in my heart that there is no hope, that the agencies of evil be they the minions of the left or the idiots of the right are in any way stronger than the Creator or His plans. That assertion itself is the height of ignorance and personal arrogance, and to make that assertion, to “Give up”, is to stand before the creator and deny his ultimate power.

Let me know how that works out for you.