A Person Who Makes Excuses

“Dad, I’m tired.” 

Over the last few days, this phrase has been muttered in the most pitiful voice Than can muster. It always follows correction. 

“Dad, I’m tired.” 

Bill Cosby, that insightful philosopher of parenting, tells a story about how his mother used to tell him that she’d knock his brains out. He says, “I always wanted to get some calves brains and have them in my hand. When she whopped me aside the head, I’d throw them on the ground. But knowing my mother it wouldn’t work. She would have said, ‘Pick up your brains. Have you lost your mind?’”

Bill had to have been an exasperating child––he certainly wants us to think so. But I think his mother’s experience is a fairly universal parenting experience. As a parent I often stumble into truth because of exasperation and exhaustion. For me this show of clumsy mental footwork usually falls out of my mouth and I wish that I hadn’t incriminated myself. 

But in life there is no fifth amendment right. We can try to hide our guilt and sweep it under rugs. We can lie to ourselves and pretend that something didn’t happen. But sin is sin. Even if we believe the lie, at some point exasperation will set in and we’ll stumble into the truth. The self-incriminating truth will fall out right out of our own mouths. 

“Dad, I’m tired.” 

This morning, following this whine, I stumbled into such a truth. My own words convicted me. I just stumbled into it. “Son, we don’t make excuses. We ask for forgiveness.” 

As people who know and experience the grace of God, we are people who don’t make excuses. Rather than hide, sweep the mess under the rug, or believe the lies that we tell ourselves, we come clean. Sin is sin. 

The reason that we can come clean is the truth of God’s grace. We can come clean because we’re not clean. When we understand God’s love for us, we can do nothing except face our sins. We don’t make excuses because we know that the only way that we can become clean is to come clean. “There is a fountain filled with blood …”

“Dad, I’m tired.”

As I’ve become more and more aware of Than’s whiny-excuses, I’ve also become aware of my own. I pray that I might receive the grace to make confessions instead of excuses.