In a recent memoir by Augusten Burroughs, who worked for a New York ad agency, Burroughs tells about the time he and a coworker, named Greer, have to go to Los Angeles to oversee the filming of a commercial. Both of them, as Burroughs readily admits, are very self-absorbed. One morning, as they’re standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change, they see a city bus heading toward the intersection. It’s empty except for the driver and a single passenger in back. Scrolling across the bus marquee above the windshield are the words “HELP ... CALL POLICE!” The bus runs a red light and keeps moving.
          Seeing that, Greer utters an obscenity, pulls her cell phone out of her purse and makes a call. “Sharon? It’s Greer,” she says. “Listen, remind me to have the Wirksam outdoor ads resized to fit buses. I totally forgot to do it before we left. Talk to you later.” She snaps her phone shut.
          “What are you doing?” asks Burroughs. “I thought you were calling 911. We need to call the cops about that bus.”
          “Oh,” Greer says. But just then, the bus turns the corner, and she adds, “Well, it’s too late now.” And as Burroughs stares at her, she says, “Don’t look at me like that! ... I’m not the only person in L.A. with a cell phone. Somebody else will call.”
          “I can’t believe you,” Burroughs says. “That was really horrible.”
          “Look,” says Greer, “Commercial shoots are stressful. My mind is focused on work. When I saw the bus, it reminded me of something, that’s all.”
          “Didn’t you see the sign up front? Lit up in the front?”
          “I can’t take care of everybody,” Greer responds. “What do you expect me to do? ... I can’t be Florence [expletive deleted] Nightingale.”
          “Don’t worry,” Burroughs says. “You’re not in any danger.”
There are so many things wrong in that story, including the fact that Burroughs, himself, doesn’t do anything to report the bus hijacking either. But Greer’s defense of her behavior is an especially blatant example of what we call, rationalizing. Now, rationalization is when we attempt to justify our bad behavior, make excuses for our misconduct, and devise self-satisfying reasons to explain our actions, even, when at their core, the actions are not justifiable. They are just plain wrong.

Remember Geraldine Jones? She’s the character invented by Comedian Flip Wilson, who had a boyfriend she referred to as “killer.” Dressed in drag, and speaking in a husky falsetto, Flip would take us into the heart and mind of the outrageous Geraldine. And quite often, when Geraldine disclosed some unsavory behavior on her part, (which was quite often), she would explain, “the devil made me do it.” Which, of course, is the perfect rationalization. It absolves one of personal responsibility. How can you be accountable for something that the devil made you do? You had no choice in the matter. It can’t be your fault. It’s the devil’s fault.

Well, okay, we may think of ourselves as too sophisticated to use that excuse. It is too easy—too glib. And it is now, thanks to Flip Wilson, probably the most famous rationalization for bad behavior known to humankind. But what about other, less famous, ways we may rationalize?

• I’m not reporting that income to the IRS because the government will just waste my money anyway.

• It wasn’t really cheating, when I took that test, because passing gets me one step closer to my medical degree, after which I can go out into the world and help people, and that’s a good thing.

• It was for my child’s own good that I hit him. He has got to learn discipline and respect. Doesn’t he?

• I lied to protect my friends; after all, what are friends for? They’d do the same thing for me.

• I just went along with the crowd. Everybody was doing it. I didn’t think it would hurt anyone.

• I was only doing what I was told. I was only following orders.

• If you hadn’t been so nasty to me I wouldn’t have hit you. You started it. Its your fault.

• If those people are that dumb, they deserve to be taken advantage of. It’s their own fault.

Now, it isn’t that we deliberately set out to deny reality and hide the truth from ourselves, but stuff happens—stuff requiring a response—a reason. And sometimes without much thought we respond in less than truthful, and less than responsible ways. We respond in a way that we think will protect our reputation. We respond in a way that we hope will put us and our behavior in the best possible light. Because we want others to think, “I am a good person.” In fact, I want to believe that about myself. I want to be a good person. So when I do something bad, I rationalize. In psychology it’s called a defense mechanism, a way we protect ourselves from guilt and shame. It’s the way we hide the truth of our own sinfulness from ourselves. We can thus fool ourselves into thinking we are better than we really are.

But our scripture lesson from the fourth chapter of the book of Hebrews let us know that we may be able to hide the truth of our sinfulness from ourselves and others, but we certainly can’t hide it from God.
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable. (Hebrews 4:13 NLT)

In other words, before God, we have absolutely no secrets. The fact that nothing about us is hidden from God means that nothing about us should be hidden from ourselves either. We need to face squarely the reality of sin in our lives, and its influence upon us, our choices, and our actions. Selfishness, greed, self-promotion, self-preservation, envy, lust, the desire to control, fear, revenge, these are all things that are part and parcel of our very human experience. These are all things that at times motivate us to do what we do, and we need to recognize this and acknowledge it. And since we cannot hide our actions or our motives from God, we also must face the fact that we are accountable to him for how we behave and how we live.

Now it has been wisely said that “denial is not a river in Egypt.” But it is the way we often try to deal with our own sins, and with our own bad behavior. But the Bible gives us a way out of denial, out of rationalizing our way to goodness, out of fooling ourselves about how good or righteous, we may presume ourselves to be. And that way is to expose ourselves to the Word of God. As it says in Hebrews:
For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. (Hebrews 4:12 NLT)

Now the reference to “the word of God” in this passage is often used to mean the Bible. But it is really much more than that. It isn’t a dusty old book that can be picked up off the shelf, or conversely left alone. The Word of God is alive and powerful says Hebrews. It is a dynamic entity, the living speech that comes from the living God. Like the Word that became human, in John chapter one—the Word that came and made his home among us—the Word that we know as Jesus Christ. And when we open ourselves up to this Word of God, then like a two edged sword, the Word can cut through all of our self-defense mechanisms, all of our rationalizations, and all of our denial. The Word can penetrate straight to the heart—to our innermost being, our authentic selves, our true inner nature, and then? Expose what is really there!

And that can be a scary thought! It sounds like it could be painful, or humiliating, to have all of our hidden ugliness exposed, the ugliness that we have tried so hard to conceal. But you know what? I imagine the scripture uses the image of a sharp sword slicing “between soul and spirit and joints and marrow” precisely because the process of having the Word expose our innermost thoughts and desires can be traumatic. But it is the only way we can grow as persons. It is the only way we can become all that God intends for us to be. It is the only way our sin and ugliness can be dealt with. The sin must be recognized, identified, acknowledged, confessed, and repented of. As John says:
If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. (1 John 1:8-9 NLT)

Or as the old proverb says, confession is good for the soul. The Apostle Paul states it a little bit differently in his second letter to the Christians in Corinth. He says:
“…the pain of having your sins exposed caused you to repent and change your ways. It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have, so you were not harmed…in any way. For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow.” (2 Corinthians 7:9-11 NLT)

You know what, our rationalizations never fool God, and seldom fool others for very long. We may, in fact, hold on to them long after everybody else has seen through them. But the sad truth is that, in the long run, the person being hurt most by rationalizing is the rationalizer. The rationalizer is not, as Paul says, “experiencing the kind of sorrow for sin that results in salvation.” The rationalizer, by living in denial, is impeding his or her own spiritual growth toward wholeness. The rationalizer is indeed stuck in a no-change zone where spiritual growth is impossible and our lives become stagnant.

Well, so that none of us remain stuck in that “no-change zone” let us remember the rest of our scripture lesson from Hebrews:
Since we have a great High Priest…Jesus the Son of God…who understands our weaknesses…let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. (Hebrews 4:14-16 NLT)

Jesus knows our weaknesses. He knows we sin and then try to hide it from ourselves and others. He knows we often find denying our issues easier than actually facing them. But he invites us to boldly come to him, even with all of our issues, even with all of the stuff we have been hiding, perhaps for years, and, instead, acknowledge it to him. Don’t be afraid to face your junk. Jesus says, Face it boldly. Confront it. Confess it. The promise is, “there we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.” “There” is that place where we stop living in denial but live transparently before God and others. It’s precisely when we stop rationalizing, and denying, that we find the mercy we need, and the grace we want.

Let us pray: