Have you ever done the wrong thing for the right reason and justified your actions? I have. I did so last night. I won't tell you what I did. It's not monumental. On a scale of 1-10, it's probably a 2. But wrong is wrong and right is right. Or is it?

I remember telling little white lies to avoid confrontation. I remember paying for things myself rather than asking the person responsible for a bill to do so, for example. I justified it by saying it doesn't matter who pays the bill as long as it gets paid. It was still a lie to the collector. Or how about telling his boss that he's sick so that he could keep his job when I actually had no clue where he was. It was a lie. I should have let him pay the consequences. How about the times when I wrote checks I knew would bounce just so we'd have food in the house or gas in the vehicle so I could get to work?

Last night I thought to myself, "Now I have something worth confessing to the priest." What? He'll tell me to do 10 Hail Marys like he did the last time. Why bother telling him? I'll just do the 10 Hail Marys so that I can feel better. But you know what? I don't think it works that way. It's that step 5, "Admitted to God, yourself and another person the exact nature of your wrongs." That's why we tell the priest. But I think telling you is just as sufficient. I did one of those things mentioned in the paragraph above.