Yesterday my oldest daughter (I have 2. The oldest is 5), climbed a chair to reach the bucket of Easter candy still left from this year, and her and her younger sister proceeded to dig in. When I walked in and saw all this I asked if she had climbed up and gotten the candy and her answer was a hesitant "no". Thus we had a "disciplinary moment", followed by a conversation where I tried to explain why lying is such a terrible thing.
And as I'm doing so, the entire time my own conscience is reminding me of just how many lies I have told. To friends, to co-workers, to family, to my wife. Maybe they were mostly "small". A few were not. I talked to my daughter about how lying damages relationships, how it destroys trust. We talked about how while trust can be rebuilt, it is painful and difficult. We talked about how much it hurts someone when we lie to them, especially when that someone has pledged their love and devotion to them, and vice versa.
I think she understood. It seems to really hurt her to think that she had hurt her daddy by lying to him. She cried, we hugged, and today we're okay. I hope the lesson stuck. It's still sticking with me. And that's exactly how it should be. We tend to think that grace means that the emotions that go with the knowledge of having sinned against another should go away. That is incorrect, I think. Should they paralyze us or lead to a pessimistic view? No. Paul was quite clear that godly sorrow is for the purpose of leading us to repentance, not leading us into a downward spiral of self-hate and morbidity. But like the stone pillar erected on the Jordan river bed, though it was unseen beneath the water, those who built it knew it was there, and just the sight of that river was enough to remind them of what was beneath it, and thus what happened the day that pillar was built.
God help us all, that we might learn to repent, to rejoice in His grace, and never forget the capacity for destruction that lies within every human heart, especially our own.
