Sin

But the words they spoke were mere flattery; *
they lied to him with their lips.
For their hearts were not truly with him; *
they were not faithful to his covenant.

Yet he who is full of compassion *
forgave them their sin and spared them.
So often he held back his anger *
when he might have stirred up his rage.

He remembered they were only men, *
a breath that passes never to return.
Psalm 78

Yup, there it is in good old black and white. 

"They lied to him with their lips for their hearts were not truly with him", "Yet he who is full of compassion forgave them their sin and spared them."

Pretty much says it all.  Today's society has turned its back on God's ways as a whole.  Oh I'm not saying that every single person has, but as a whole, contemporary US society has pretty much said, "No, thanks" to the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes.  Without a general agreement on the concept of sin or a wholesale belief that sin doesn't exist anymore, society has pretty much turned its back on the Creator.  Like I saw on Facebook today, "If there was no God there'd be no reason to be an Atheist." 

 

So, why do all these folks go around railing against the moral tenets advocated by the Church.  You know, this isn't a cafeteria line where you get to pick and choose which of the natural laws you want to agree with.  Don't pick gravity.  Don't pick magnetism. Don't pick the speed of light or sound.  Just because you don't pick them, doesn't make it so. 

 

The natural law is inherent in human behavior because we were created in the image of the Trinity. (Then God said: Let us make^* human beings in our image, after our likeness. Genesis 1:  26)  Yup, God was plural in the beginning.  We are created with these moral imperatives already encoded in our circuits.  That's why most societies have laws against murder, incest, theft, and so on.  Everyone still has that quiet little voice that twangs when you do something that is really stupidly wrong.  Our faith tradition just does a pretty good job of explaining how this all works.

 

What we need is to rekindle a healthy respect for what is truly right and wrong.  A good healthy respect for sin -  

Sin sets itself against God’s love for us and turns our hearts away from it. Like the first sin, it is disobedience, a revolt against God through the will to become “like gods,”¹²³ knowing and determining good and evil. Sin is thus “love of oneself even to contempt of God.

 Catechism #1850

When we acknowledge that sin exists (and its hard to ignore the above definition), we gain a healthy respect for the reality of our lives.  We recognize that concentrating on "what feels good" really isn't the best way to proceed through life.  Ultimately, we recognize that the whole point of Jesus' message is to repent of this selfishness, turn back to God's way, and enjoy the good life as it was originally meant to be.  Think of other first, knowing that is what God's love is all about.