Why Uncover Sin?

If you are a regular reader you know I haven’t been posting much the past few months, it isn’t that I don’t have much to say, rather than perhaps I have too much to say and I need to meditate on it and choose the best things to write about. This season of life has been wonderful in the Word and in the Kingdom, sometimes the wine needs to sit and wait and breathe.

Speaking of wine and good food, a difference between a great book and a great world-class meal is that I can enjoy the book until I die, I cannot say the same about the meal...or a fine bottle of wine. I have had book “friends”, such as The Cost of Discipleship, since I was a teenager...and these friends get sweeter and richer with the passage of time and experience.

Yesterday I began a new book, and as I touched the book I was reminded of something I read in another book by another author about the author of the book I am just beginning to enjoy. The other author is a person I have met, whose speaking and writing I enjoy - and yet in one of his books he said something about this other author which was unnecessary, which did not contribute to the message of his own book, and yet which planted a bad thought and image in the mind of the reader about another person. The author of yesterday’s book is dead, the other author is alive  - would the other author have written such a thing about a living person?

This in turn reminded me of a statement I heard in a church meeting from a person who has meant much to me, who has significantly contributed to my life; the statement was about another person, a person who has been dead for well over 100 years, a person who has a wonderful testimony of faith and benevolence. Once again, this statement did nothing to add to the speaker’s message, but it planted a dark image in the minds of his listeners about someone who many, perhaps, admired.

Even if what the author and speaker above wrote and said was true - how is it edifying? How did it build people up? Did not Christ die to cover our sins? What right do we have to gratuitously uncover that which Christ has covered and forgiven?

Well, I was pondering this...once we say something, once we write something, it is difficult to repair the damage. I will enjoy the book I’m reading and trust Jesus to have taken care of any inconsistencies in the life of the author I’m reading...I think He is able to do that. It is amazing what God produces through broken vessels.