There are those sins
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.
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I have lashed out at my Creator at times, wished Him out of my life, tired pushing Him out, and have been tempted, sorely, to give up. But I never once have believed He is not there, and not bigger than my petty attempts at prideful, willful opposition to His wonder and power.
I once counseled someone who was teasing out the idea of suicide, much the same as you have. I told her it was the ultimate fist in God’s face saying, “You can’t. You’re not big enough. You lie.” It came to me in a moment while speaking with her, although I’d never had any formal teaching or training, I just knew.
All these years later, and her life and her faith are much more than my own. I hope He’ll credit that my purgatory account. . .
lol. From your mouth to His ears, Joan. We need all the help we can get, don’t we?
People ask us how we still manage to get up every day, look at the troubles we’re in, and still remain optimists. They are absolutely convinced that in the same situations they would have just given up or curled up in a corner to die.
This is why we still get up in the morning. Because to give up is despair, and to keep going is the essence of faith.
Not to mention that once I learned to pray to God correctly my prayers keep being answered in very interesting and unexpected ways. If you give up praying for the means and just pray for the ends (I call it praying to God the Engineer) you start seeing all sorts of possibilities.
If you put God’s power into an understandable little box where He can only work through the means that you choose, you tend to miss the little miracles. If you accept that God’s power is unfathomable, you learn to look for hope in the smallest things.
Good post; good comments. Nothing to add, but thanks…
Very nicely said, sir. Without the hope and strength of my relationship with God I would have given up long ago. I had someone ask me once why Christians had to experience bad things such as my health problems. I told her it was so non-believers could see the power given to us so we can overcome. He gives me the ability to smile through the pain and laugh when times are hard.
Well, of course.
I have things for which I must answer. That said, I am depending upon God’s mercey, not God’s justice.
If we truely got what we deserve, we’d be certainly up the creek.
Gods grace is how we all shall find salvation. With out it we would be doomed.
Thank you for the essay, and thanks to all of you for the thoughtful comments. This is the sin I struggle with, if not daily, then certainly weekly (and weakly, sorry).
And Melody, the idea of God being unfathomable so that even the concept of “God” falls short of the reality is something the Muslims believe, but I think that even for them, the mind struggles with the concept.
With the realization that, perfection on earth, will only happen with the return of Christ, I become aware that, my job is not to seek perfection, but to work towards maintaining a moral and loving life. For me that includes trying to maintain a moral and just Government, in the One country in the world that seems to have been formed through divine providence.
If nothing else, there seems to be a clear difference in candidates, in that one seems to believe in a loving, merciful God. And one believes in I’m not sure what, the divine power of Government?
Well stated. So many forget that the almighty does not do things to us, he does them for us. Every experience offers a chance to reach out in faith to find hope, courage, healing and so on. But we must humble ourselves enough to ask. When I had fallen into that darkest pit of despair that we have all danced around, I screamed my unworthy prayer, “God, just make it fucking stop” skyward and it was answered in minutes. My whole life changed in that instant. Now I can be of maximum service to my creator and my fellows by sharing his love with them. Four years later and I have never been happier.