The sin of excuses …

There’s an insidious behavior among some professing Christians — the sin of excuses.

This is when the person who outwardly appears to be a fine specimen of good moral behavior inwardly schemes to disguise known sin with an excuse. This somewhat eases their consciences and provides cover for those who see their improper behavior. The excuse is meant to divert attention away from the sin. Alex Cooper shared a story reported by Conservative Daily Post that reflects this flawed thinking of practicing sin wrapped in an excuse …

Mary from Dallas, Texas filed a lawsuit against background check site Persopo.com on June 16, 2016 in state court. In her lawsuit she alleges Persopo.com provided “confidential” information about her to her at the time husband. Her husband divorced her based off this information and she wants Persopo.com to pay.

No where in the lawsuit does it dispute if the information is accurate or not. Nor that she was having an affair on her husband with multiple men.

Conservative Daily Post spoke to Mary’s ex-husband, Frank, to figure out more about this strange situation. Frank had suspected his wife of cheating for a long time. She would constantly be gone for hours without answering her phone and never seemed to have an honest answer why she was gone.

Frank had finally had enough and decided to start doing some research online. He found Persopo.com a background check site that can give you all sorts of information about someone. To use Persopo.com all you need to do is type in a name and state and the system goes to work pulling together every possible piece of information on them. Persopo.com not only pulls from public records but many different social and dating websites around the internet. It can give you a full picture of someone’s online activity almost instantly. This is how Frank caught his wife, Mary.

“When I searched her name it came right up, she had accounts matching her name and email on cheatingwives.com, match.com and many others.” Frank said. “I just couldn’t believe this was the woman that I married.”

This man’s wife claimed this website should pay for her husband discovering her sin of adultery because, up until then, her scheme of cheating had been working (at least, in her mind)!

Jesus had a run-in with some Pharisees who thought like this woman, who wanted to hide their purposeful sin behind excuses. At first, it was the Pharisees who thought Jesus needed to explain Himself …

“Some Pharisees and teachers of religious law now arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. They asked him, ‘Why do your disciples disobey our age-old tradition? For they ignore our tradition of ceremonial hand washing before they eat,” Matthew 15:1-2.

Jesus dismissed the empty probing of the Pharisees and, instead, directly revealed how they attempted to hide their sin behind excuses …

“Jesus replied, ‘And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? For instance, God says, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ In this way, you say they don’t need to honor their parents. And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition,” Matthew 15:3-6.

In similar fashion, we try to cancel the Word of God, sometimes with traditions, or other excuses such as blaming the ungodly influences in our lives. There is a bottom line, though: behind all of those excuses is the reality of a sinful heart that God sees.

“You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God,’” Matthew 15:7-9.

Do you act in a way that you know is sin, but try to wrap it in an excuse?

Scotty