Forgiven Sins Spared from Committing

The other day, my wife sent my 11 year old son to the convenience store, about two blocks away, for a dozen eggs. My 7 year old daughter asked to go with him.  When my wife told her no and began to explain to her that her brother couldn’t hold her hand and carry eggs at the same time, my daughter began to get upset.  “He doesn’t need to hold my hand,” she protested.  It is much safer, my wife told her, especially in the busy parking lot.

My daughter was having none of that, stomped her foot and stormed up the stairs to her bedroom.

From a child’s point of view, being told "no" can be rather devastating, leading to anger – albeit temporary as it usually is – at the parent, heartrending sobbing, or an all out tantrum. Even if the parent tries to explain the reasons for the denial, the child may not fully understand it, or simply not care to hear any reason at all.

Most often unknown to children is the hidden guidance that parents give, invisibly helping their children to avoid potential problems and possible dangers.

I thought about this the other day as I was reading St. Augustine’s Confessions, when a particular line jumped out at me.  Speaking of his boyhood, St. Augustine writes, “I avow that you have forgiven me all, both the sins which I committed of my own accord and those which by your guidance I was spared from committing.”

Forgiven for sins I was spared from committing? Does that mean that even though I didn’t commit a sin “on my own accord,” that is, by my own actions (deliberately or not), God knew that, given the chance, I would, and thus the need for forgiveness?

I knew there were those times when I almost sinned but had been able to catch myself. This usually happens while commuting back and forth to work.  It’s also been known to happen when writing out bills and when doing my taxes.  But it is far more than that.

I thought about a time when I was in high school. There was a local carnival and a friend of mine and I were going to go with his older sister who had a car.  My father, after an agonizingly long list of conditions and rules, gave his permission.  I was excited.  It was an annual carnival that I had been to every year since I was little.  This would be the first time I’d be going without parental supervision, and the first time I would ever see what happens at the carnival at night.

I waited anxiously by my bedroom window. It was getting dark.  I imagined the strings of lights by the game booths and the blur of flashing bright colors from the whirling rides.  My dad peeked into my room asking me what time I was being picked up.  I was supposed to leave around 7.  It was nearly 8:15.  My dad smiled and walked away.

When the car pulled up in front of my house nearly an hour and a half later, my father told me it was too late for me to go. I would have to tell my friend – in front of his older sister and her friends – that I wasn’t allowed to go anymore because they were late.  I was angry and hurt and embarrassed.  Much to my chagrin, I told them I couldn’t go.  I stood in front of my house until the red rear lights of the car disappeared.

Contemplating that episode, I now wondered what sins I may have been spared from making that night? Then I thought, what if I didn’t have the parents that I had.  What if I wasn’t raised in the community I was raised in?  What if my upbringing was in a very different kind of household with perhaps very permissive parents who were only there part of the time?  What if I had grown up in an entirely different environment?  Would I have succumb to the snares and allure of crime and violence and drugs?  I like to think I would have been one of those who was able to overcome conditions of homelessness and poverty and parentlessness and crime and violence.  There are plenty of them out there.  I know so many.  But would I have been one of them?  There by the Grace of God go I, and I am forgiven for it.

It is apparent that, like the great parent he is, God has guided me, and while at times that guidance was hurtful, it inevitably has lead me to right where He has always wanted me – closer to Him.