6 ways we all justify wrong choices

You don’t work in the people business very long before you come to realize that none of us are exempt from stupidity. It only takes one wrong decision to end a career, blow up a marriage or destroy a family. While each of us is prone to make really foolish moral decisions, I have come to realize that–in the mind of the sinner–those decisions have usually been justified. If we could learn to battle these false justifications before we actually made the moral decision we’d stand a much better chance of making the right one.  Here are six ways we all justify our wrongdoing.

• Justification by blame-shifting: You make me so mad when you do that.
• Justification by comparison: I know what I did was wrong, but it wasn’t as bad as what they did.
• Justification though weakness: I tried to say no, but the temptation was too great.
• Justification by independence: It’s my life; I think I should be able to do what I want.
• Justification by merit: I had a hard week; I felt like I deserved the pleasure.
• Justification by majority: Everybody else is doing it; it can’t that bad.

While each of these justifications is wrong, they feel so right at the time. In the Puritan prayer-book The Valley of Vision, one old saint recorded:

Let me never forget that the hideousness of sin lies not so much in the nature of the sin committed, as in the greatness of the Person sinned against.

Now there’s a prayer worth remembering next time your desires try to get you to justify your wrong decisions.

PHIL MOSER is the author of the Biblical Strategies series and the developer of 4M Training: a 13-week small group study for men. All of his resources can be found on amazon or at biblicalstrategies.com.

If you’re looking for a resource for your men’s group, consider 4M Training. Mature, master, minister, and mentor in 13 weeks. Click on image below to learn more.