To what extent does one consider oneself to be good? To a large extent, of course. Moving from a relativistic world where a permissive society has warped the meaning of decency to a self-centered world where everyone else is to blame but oneself, people have become blinder and blinder to their own iniquities. This loss of insight is aggravated by those who lead people to error, by preaching that mercy is matched up with sin, presumably measure for measure, canceling it out. With mercy at the ready awaiting every sin that will be committed, there is no need for a an examination of conscience [1], no need to be sorry and no need for atonement. Therefore, one ought to be able to claim that one is always good and living with a clean conscience, having just come out of a shower of mercy.
Can one whose sins have just been hosed down by the brand of easy mercy promoted by this papacy claim to be good in the way that God is good, that the new Adam is good and the new Eve is good? If so, then is one still a sinner? If one remains a sinner, then how good and bad is a person at any point in time? Without an answer to the question, another has come up: What is good?
Since love comes from God and God is without a doubt good, therefore love is good. Since nobody can love like God, can any one be truly good? No, but can a "no" answer be always right? Do people not go through lives helping other people and doing good things for others? Are they not good?
The secular-minded people of the world would prefer that good not be defined relative to God but relative to Satan, the nameless, faceless and invisible force that drive them without them knowing it. If on Judgment Day, every soul is judged relative to Satan, then all souls will enter Heaven because when compared to Satan, every soul can be deemed saintly. This is fantasy. Hell exists for a purpose. It is a place for those who erred knowingly and irrevocably and who have deliberately or heretically led others to error.
There are all kinds of errors, too numerous to list. As an example, overestimating oneself as good is an error, but a correctable error.
Knowing the truth can lead to the correction of errors. It is therefore best to have honest, periodic, if not frequent, examinations of conscience to allow oneself to see interiorly, without resorting to rationalization and denial because sooner or later, one will have no choice but to face up to the truth.
When it comes to the truth, man and Satan are partners: man wants to hide from it and Satan wants to lie about it. This blog postulates that there are two truths. One is spelled with a small "t" and these truths belong to the person and are particular to the person. These truths often change as they are being manipulated to fit the occasion to benefit the self. They then become new, sad truths. The other truth is spelled with a capital "T". This Truth is God's Truth. It never changes and lasts forever.
When Christ said, "'I am the way and the truth and the life'" [2] and when speaking to "the Jews who believed in him" [3] said, "'If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free[,]'" [4] they are truths that fall under Truth with a capital "T". To avoid and deny the Truth is to be enslaved by the chain of suffering and the chain of death. Adam and Eve knew this well [5], and so should their descendants be mindful that they are the recipients of their first parents' twin fates which would have been eternal but for the Son of God, Who became man to save man from eternal suffering and eternal death.
The salvation of man's soul is contingent upon man following the way of Christ, which is the way of the Truth, which speaks of love, and only then will man have eternal life. To be able to live in God's Truth through Christ, one must first confront one's own unvarnished truths, since one cannot see God's Truth clearly without first coming to terms with one's own.
It is never easy to look into oneself in order to discover one's own truths, because they can be very ugly and not too many people are ready to admit to themselves that they are just as ugly as Satan is. Some people are so enveloped by the Satanic forces that dominate the world that they do not even know that they are the slaves of the one true Enemy. Christ has shown to all the path away from Satan by the words He spoke, by the life He led and by the death He suffered, but His path is very difficult to embark upon, even more so to stay on it because Satan is unremitting in seeking the ruin of souls.
Before one even begins to think about taking a first step onto Christ's path, one has to peel off the different layers that makes up one's character and touch figuratively the rotten core inside. Imagine this core feeding all kinds of sins with each sin being represented by a different serpent, some larger, some smaller. The more susceptible one is to a particular sin, the bigger is the serpent; the less susceptible, the smaller.
Is it possible that they will all go away? Yes ought to be the answer, but that will come with suffering. Tribulations in life will drive away the serpents when accepted with humility, faith and love. Rare is the person who looks forward to, welcomes and receives gladly sufferings of the mind, body and spirit. Perhaps one can reduce the intensity and the time that would be necessary to purge one's sins by recognizing them presently, by being humble and by praying for strength in overcoming one's weaknesses.
Some sins are easier to identify than others. Of the seven deadly ones [2], lust is probably the easiest to recognize and probably the most difficult to resist. Wrath, too, is also fairly easy to recognize and perhaps just as easy to overcome, depending on the person. Sloth and gluttony can be fairly common, especially in societies where there are wealthy people who do not have much to do and where there are poor people who are able to depend on a secular government's handout; with all that is available for the rich and the poor, sloth and gluttony are not easily eliminated. Greed and envy can be seen as both sides of the same coin, and because they are both addictive, they take turns driving one another to its extreme and because of this interaction, they reinforce one another and tend to last. Pride is definitely the most subtle to recognize of all. It disguises itself and assumes all kinds of identities that on the surface are innocuous, even wise. In whatever form or manner it surfaces, pride takes away one's capacity to love. In order to see how well it has confined one's capacity to love, one has to look to one's target, the person who is subjected to one's judgments, in order to get a feel for the damage one's pride has caused.
Sometimes upon hearing another speak one immediately draws conclusions based on assumptions which sometimes can be unfounded. The person concluding is often unaware that the conclusions reached could be wrong and hurtful by diminishing goodness in the other person and reduce a motive that originates from kindness to one that is from selfishness.
This happens because the judgment is often based on what one is most familiar with, and that is the person judging. One would place oneself in the other person's shoes and assumes that the other person would have the same ulterior motives as one would have in a similar situation. It would generally not occur for one to think that there could be a completely different perspective, one that is selfless and untainted, that originates from love from within the heart.
Pride blinds a person, and disallows one to admit to oneself that others may have an abundance of goodness so much greater than the goodness within oneself. The lack of faith in the goodness of others is a reflection of the shallowness of goodness in oneself. By subtracting from the amount of goodness in others, one equates the amount of goodness within oneself.
This is not an incurable disease. Similar to one's built-in immunity that can restore one to health, one's innate ability to love can wipe out one's blindness and return one's sight to see genuine unselfishness in others rather than a reflection of the goodness diminished by pride in oneself. Sadly, no medication will activate this love. Humility and prayer, however, can restore faith in the goodness of souls.
From the receiver's perspective, hearing someone say things that are hurtful reveals much more about the speaker's character than the character of the person who has to listen them. It is of no use to be upset or angry, nor is it all that useful to tell the other person that he or she is wrong. Those who are presumptuous and skeptical and judge incorrectly tend to continue to be presumptuous and skeptical and judge incorrectly. They have lost every bit of innocence and in its place, they have chosen to rely entirely on their intellect that is devoid of compassion. By being proud of one's intellect, one overlooks his or her personal deficiencies. While overlooking one's own deficiencies, one overlooks one's own imperfections, in particular, pride. There is little one can do to heal such blindness in others. It is therefore best to be accepting and forgiving of this blindness, just as one ought to be kind to another who is physically or mentally impaired by a disease. Just as Christ is able to forgive one's trespasses, one must forgive another's so that every time, innocence is renewed without prejudgment.
A reflection of perfect goodness is also a reflection of God, for God has full faith in the goodness of souls, for God loves each and everyone. How accurately one is able to see one's own goodness will depend on how often one examines one conscience and how honest one is when performing the examination.
[1] http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/sacraments-and-sacramentals/penance/examinations-of-conscience.cfm
[2] http://www.usccb.org/bible/john/14, 6, quoted without footnote.
[3] http://www.usccb.org/bible/jn/8:4747, 31, quoted with paragraph number and footnote.
[4] http://www.usccb.org/bible/jn/8:4747, 31-2, quoted with paragraph number and footnote.
[5] http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/3, 1-19.
[6] http://www.deadlysins.com/
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