The eCrozier

Last week we celebrated the Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine, probably more than any other western theologian, helped us all try to make sense of (and theologize about) human behavior.  In the second volume of his Confessions, Augustine relates how as a young boy he and some friends stole pears from a neighbor’s orchard.  Augustine wrote: “We took away an enormous quantity of pears, not to eat them ourselves, but simply to throw them to the pigs.” They also threw some of the pears against a wall. In his Confessions, Augustine did not dismiss this as a “boys will be boys” episode in his childhood. As an older and wiser Bishop, he looked back on this episode introspectively asking: “why did we do that?” His eventual answer was that sin is pervasively present in all humanity. He later acknowledged: “The evil in me was foul, but I loved it.” It seems there is nothing original about Original Sin.

What has prompted me to remember Augustine and the pear tree is the story of Roger Clemens, maybe the greatest baseball pitcher of recent times. He was recently indicted for lying to Congress. In his sworn testimony, he insisted he never, ever, used performance-enhancing drugs. Trouble is, there is corroborated testimony that says he clearly did. So, with Augustine, I ask: why did he do that? And why does he hold so fast to the fiction that he did not do it? It calls to mind former President Clinton’s strident statement: “I never had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

Pete Rose, the greatest baseball hitter of all time, exhibited similar stubbornness to the truth. He was banned from baseball for betting on the game (a capital offense in baseball). But Rose, like Clemens continues to do, denied for 15 years that he did anything of the sort. A few year’s back, he finally admitted what he had done. When asked recently why he denied gambling on baseball for all those years, Rose replied: “I didn’t think I’d get caught” (in his denial).

We are complicated creations, aren’t we? Like Augustine, Pete Rose, Bill Clinton, and Roger Clemens, we try to outrun the truth. But, since the truth never gets out of breath, we can’t outrun it. The Bible is singularly helpful here. In 1 John 1:8-9 we find: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

We live in a time when many of us expect more truthfulness from politicians and sports heroes than we expect from ourselves. And when we discover they are just like us, we are crushed and exile them, either figuratively or literally. Now, I am not suggesting for a minute that we should not expect truthfulness from ourselves and from others. We should.  But we should tone down our shock and outrage that they do what they do (that we do what we do). There is nothing original in any of this. Let’s be truthful with one another. And then let’s extend to others the same grace and mercy God extends to us through Jesus.

+Scott