On Offering Excuses

Any act of ours that is in any way wrong or unworthy, almost always seems to set in motion a process called self-justification. Often, even before we are called upon to explain our errors to others, we have already explained them to ourselves. And the excuses humankind can think of are a tribute to man’s inventive genius, even if not always to regard for truth. There is no small deception, no theft, there is no kind of lying or cheating or misdoing but for which, if a man goes back far enough, and misuses the facts adroitly enough, he can find the means of self-justification. If he takes something from his employer that doesn’t belong to him, he may offer, first to himself and then to others, the explanation that he has given more service than he was paid for anyway, and that what he has taken was therefore rightfully his. If he takes something from a neighbor that doesn’t belong to him, he may offer the explanation that he needs it worse than his neighbor, and, in the ultimate justice of things, he should have had it anyway—which is a kind of thinking that marks the beginning of the road to ruin. Or he may immediately begin to tell himself how much worse are the things which other men do, and since what he does is not so bad as what others do, by some miscarriage of logic, by some distortion of fact, he finds himself justified in committing a lesser act because someone else has committed a greater one. In childhood, we confront Freddie with some misdeed, and he immediately begins to tell us how much worse was the thing his playmate did, which in some unexplainable way is supposed to exonerate Freddie. Errors are one thing, but justifying them is quite another. If you can bring a man to admit the error of his ways, there is some chance of saving him, but he will never drop his “face-saving”, will never humble himself, will always offer excuses, will always indulge in self-justification, he but digs himself deeper and deeper into his false position. “Face-saving” concerns but the appearance of things, while honor has to do with the very moral structure. And ofttimes when a man is solely concerned with offering excuses, he both loses his honor and jeopardizes his soul’s salvation. Reformation for the wrong-doer is virtually impossible to bring about until he conceded to himself his own error.