Living in delusion

The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: `God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector (Luke 18:11).

Can you identify the speaker of the following quotation: “I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them to have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.”

Who was this man—some public figure from the world of politics, business, sports or the media? No—it was Al Capone. At one time wanted as Public Enemy Number One, Capone actually regarded himself as a public benefactor, one who was unappreciated and misunderstood.

Warden Lewis Lawes once stated: “Few criminals in Sing Sing regard themselves as bad men. They are just as human as you and I. So they rationalize, they explain. They can tell you why they had to crack a safe or be quick on the trigger finger. Most of them try by fallacious or illogical reasoning to justify their antisocial acts even to themselves, consequently stoutly maintaining that they should never have been imprisoned at all.”

The hardest thing about being a sinner is admitting it to yourself. The sin living in us doesn’t like it when someone tries to put limits on what gives us pleasure. So sin tries to convince us that we know what is best for us, that we should define for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. And if we live our lives according to our own definitions of right and wrong, we won’t feel that we’ve done wrong very often.

But defining good and evil is God’s prerogative. When we decide for ourselves what is good and evil, we are assuming the role of God. This is the oldest sin of all—in the Garden of Eden, Satan tempted our first parents with the words you will be like God (Genesis 3:5). This is the sin against the very first Commandment: You shall have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:3).

Thankfully, Jesus took our punishment for trying to stand in the place of God. Through the Bible, Jesus shows us God’s definition of right and wrong, so we can see where we have come up short and ask for forgiveness. Admitting that we’re in the wrong is hard—but because of Jesus’ love for us, being forgiven is easy—just ask Him, and the gift is yours.