The big activity around my parish during this summer has been capture the flag. Since we have a changing crew each time we play, we don’t always do a great job of listing all of the rules before each game starts. If the new guy breaks a rule because they don’t know it’s a rule, we don’t hold it against them. We let them know and move on.

I think our spiritual morality is analogous to that. We get deeper in our understanding of morality and God’s expectations for us. There are things we used to do without remorse that we now realize are sinful or lead us to sin. As we get closer to God through our spiritual maturity, He reveals to us the ways that we can be more like Christ. Contrary to these ways are the sins in the times when we say “We don’t have time for you now, God” or “I know the rules, but this feels better right now – I’ll make up for it later.”

Of course, once we know the way, then it’s our job to abide by the way. We can’t be without sin but perfection is the unachievable goal we strive for anyway.