Does belief make you better?

I've often said that being a believer doesn't automatically make you a better person. Take this letter to Billy Graham for example...

Dear Dr. Graham: Will God forgive even the sins we forget to confess to him? At the end of each day, I try my best to remember everything I've done wrong and ask God to forgive me, but I'm sure I must miss something. E.L.

Every single day? So every day EL does so much wrong that he can't remember it all? And to boot, he goes though this every day? Apparently he never learns and simply continues this cycle endlessly. So much for that fabled Christian moral superiority.

Dear E.L.: It's good to look back at the end of each day and ask God to show us how we failed, and then seek his forgiveness.

Sin breaks our fellowship with God, and it's important to deal with our sins at once. I'll never forget the advice someone gave me many years ago: “Don't let your sins pile up; keep short accounts with God.”

"Don't let sins pile up; keep short accounts with God."? Apparently Billy is perfectly fine with Christians doing wrongs regularly, just so long as they also say sorry to God regularly as well... How about the advice to simply try not to do wrong at all? Then again Christianity has always been more concerned with forgiveness than actually following the moral guidelines it so often preaches.

If simply believing, and forgiving your sins to God magically makes your wrongs go away, where is the incentive to behave? If anything is forgiven, then a Christian is free to 'sin' all day, every day and simply say 'sorry' to Jesus. Where is the fairness, justice and morality in this? The person being wronged isn't even the recipient of the apology. A god that forgives anything actually prohibits nothing.


-Brain Hulk

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