c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) While I park the car, my son races ahead to find his teammates.

I reach the soccer field as a younger kids’ game is breaking up. Some parents are lecturing their kids on everything they did wrong. One dad is grinding his poor son into the ground with criticism. Kids hang their heads in shame.

Why do kids drop out of sports? I’d say the answer is right here. What child will want to continue in an activity where the harvest is parental criticism if one plays poorly or the team loses?

A friend tells me about a soccer league where the parents have signed a covenant promising to keep their mouths shut and to let the kids enjoy their games. Interesting approach. If you know your weakness, sign a pledge. Don’t wait for consequences such as a child’s deflated ego.

In grasping God’s promises of forgiveness and mercy, it is important to remember that sin usually has at least two victims: oneself and the other person whom one wounds. It is one thing to confess one’s sins and to ask forgiveness. It is quite another to deal with the consequences one has caused in others.

Tonight’s hyper-critical dad, for example, might one day grow up and repent his harsh behavior. In the meantime, though, his child will carry a wound into adolescence and beyond. Promising to do better next time won’t erase the outcomes of this time.

Friends can help an alcoholic break through denial by unequivocally stating the consequences of the alcoholic’s behavior. But naming the consequences must lead eventually to the alcoholic’s own desire to make amends, and that won’t come early or easily. In 12-step programs, dealing with consequences happens late in recovery, in steps 8 and 9. Even then, it will be too late for many of those wounded.

Recently, for example, a friend and I were enjoying coffee at our favorite gourmet store, when the owner suddenly shooed us out the door. “Time for inventory,” he explained. Behind him stood a phalanx of county sheriffs and a workman changing the locks. His promise to open in “a day or two” sounded empty.

I suspect the owner will catch up on his taxes and reopen. But the consequences won’t vanish overnight. He has our sympathy, but he has lost something, too _ our trust, our respect, our confidence that the morning cup will be there for us. We’ll see if people return. Vendors no doubt will demand cash.

Many a marriage that started too young has unraveled just as the partners were becoming mature enough to make it work. The wounds of yesterday’s immaturity were too deep, the millstone of past behaviors too heavy.

Jesus’ saying about not putting a “stumbling block” before his “little ones” is often taken as a warning to infidels: don’t mess with the chosen. Early Christians certainly took it as divine protection for their fledgling institution. But I think Jesus meant something else.

Sin can be forgiven, but the “wages of sin” _ the consequences, earnings, harvest _ are death. Maybe death in the sense of eternal hellfire for the sinner _ although that much-belabored image contradicts the promise of forgiveness _ but more likely death to what the forgiven sinner hopes to regain.

Those over-involved and hyper-critical parents who are ruining kid sports might see their children abandoning athletics and might then promise, “Never again.” But the damage will have been done. The millstone of remorse won’t go away easily.

This might be where faith meets its toughest match. If faith were about rules and piety, churches would be full. If life could be redeemed by memorizing Scripture or receiving sacraments, we could all sleep well at night.

But faith requires one to see the good, and then to see the bad, and then to see the evil one has done, and then to beg forgiveness, and then to see the consequences and to taste the acid of remorse, and then _ if one has gotten this far _ to weep before God and to ask God to bind the wounds one cannot heal by repentance, no matter how heartfelt.

Grace might be free, but it isn’t cheap.

DEA END RNS