White Lies

This morning in my Lenten booklet, the author talked about the meeting held by the Jewish leaders shortly after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. At this meeting, according to John’s gospel, they made the decision that Jesus needed to be killed. They justified this decision based on Caiphus’ argument that should the Jewish masses proclaim Jesus to be the Messiah, the Romans would overtake them and they would lose their freedom.

The real reason? Caiphus’ argument was probably partially true. But there was likely a lot of jealousy and fear. After all, this Jesus fellow preached a lot of things that didn’t necessarily follow Jewish teaching, and he had the ability to get so many people so excited. This fear caused the leaders to use Caiphus’ argument to justify Christ’s crucifixion in their minds.

I began thinking about how easy it is to justify doing bad things. You only have to read history books to see that. Lots of bad things have happened throughout history that were justified by someone. The holocaust is only one example.

But I also do that it my everyday life. White lies, for instance. I probably tell a white lie at least once a week. Generally I do it so that I don’t hurt someone’s feelings. Sometimes I will think afterwards, “Why didn’t I just tell the truth. I was trying to not to hurt her feelings, but now everything is more complicated.”

I also occasionally will get mad at Bill (my family, I know, is SHOCKED to read this), but I can always justify it in my mind. “He can be so difficult!,” I will tell myself. “He’s practically asking for me to give him the silent treatment.”

I realize that my sins are small compared to things like murder. But I can only control myself. I will work on trying to stop justifying things that are just wrong, no matter how small.