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Lent 2025: April 2

 My intentions were to write every day. I have missed a few. But I am learning, in my old age, about grace. 

The young man who oversees student conduct (deals with the cheaters) spoke to my department yesterday. My attitude toward kids who cheat is "you're a big fat liar and I don't care what happens to you."  When it comes to intentionally using AI or stealing other writers' work, I still feel that way. It's the easy way out while they mess around and blow off the learning effort, and it's a character problem. But students also have trouble with plagiarism because of bad training in the past, because they resort to "less than" work out of a wrong academic mindset, and because life gets to be too much for them and they are not ready for the demands of college.  I see that.  So every student who ends up in the student conduct office is not the same person with the same reasons. 

Some mercy is warranted, in some cases. And this applies to myself, every minute. I do not forgive myself, but that starts with not recognizing how much sin really goes on in my life orbit. I lost my temper and actually threw things yesterday--just shoes in the closet, but still not a good move--over something I have battled for over 40 years and still can't get into my thick head that my solution to the problem is futile. It's something I cannot do, I cannot solve, I cannot handle, even though I think my efforts will. It's Sysiphian. (a word?) And it is not something I have given to God. 

I come to Paul's discussion of sin in Romans. You really have to slog through sin to get to Romans 8 (one of my favorites!)  

And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things, and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? 

Judgment, perhaps, does not lead to repentance as much as we would like to think. It is the goodness of God. Do we stop to meditate on that?  

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