Spiritual Blindness

And Pulling a Fast One on God



Yesterday an elderly white man got on a bus. He was wearing dirty jeans, a smelly old brown sweater frayed at the bottom of his sleeves and carrying a slightly torn plastic bag of what looked like groceries. He wreaked of stale alcohol, had puffy hands and was slightly bloated. He was easily identified as "alcoholic." He tottled onto the bus, grappled the high bar above his head and missed the first time.



As I looked at him I wanted to say "alcohol is poison to you- if you give it up you can make it and your life can totally change." He wasn't a bad looking elderly man-I imagined how different his life could be if he cleaned his act up.

This had everyone on the bus looking at him, some with pity some with scorning disgust. After he left the bus one young African American man wiped tears from his eyes it was such a sad sight to see a man so destroyed by alcohol. Some were so angry at the sight of someone so destroyed - a living death of sorts- you could see their "don't you dare stand next to me" venemous eyes.

He seems completely oblivious to the reaction of people moving away from him and the staring eyes of people trying hard not to look.



And then I thought that this is probably how God views a lot of us more or less- with some profound defect easily identifiable to the holiest of holies. To the holiest of holies we all look somehow scarred and marred by the filth of the corroding effects of sin on the earth. God might look at that one and easily identify "GREED" or another is "SELFISH" or another is "PRIDE" or "VANITY" or "ENVY" or "HATE" and it all looks like horrendously smelly diseased defects to God-



But at the same time that God sees all of that, he is the one looking at it with profound pity, which the french language reminds us is Mercy- because in French the word for mercy is PITIER. Empitier Nous- Have Mercy on Us oh Lord. Have Pity on Us- we are all pathetic. And it isn't really until you understand how much you look like a sinful alcoholic of another sin that you really understand how much you need God's Mercy. Because otherwise you would just get your fat smelly arse kicked off the heavenly bus.


Washington is full of prideful spiritually arrogant people posturing for power in the biggest superpower that is. Power. Ambition, Greed, these are not theological virtues.
This is why spiritual pride is the worst kind of sin of presumption and why hypocrites don't make it to heaven. There are few things more lethal than spiritual pride that separates you from the Love of God -Love which is God.