I find myself wondering when pastors and churches stand before the Lord and are asked what they did with the resources given them, whether they will say, “We dropped the ball.”

And wondering how that will fly.

In the city where I live, the local Children’s Hospital–a hero to untold thousands for many years–is under attack and the focus of a number of lawsuits.

Over the past couple of years, the hospital had at least five patients (all children) to die of a fungal infection which was the result of infected bed clothing.

As bad as that is, the hospital leadership did something even worse: They did not report it.

They were protecting themselves, they thought, by not following the law and informing the appropriate agencies about this. Consequently, they are in a mess of trouble.

Sound familiar?

The previous mayor of New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, watched as a number of his colleagues in his administration pleaded guilty to malfeasance or racketeering and headed to prison. And now, he himself has been found guilty by a jury and will be headed that way.  He keeps insisting that his intentions were good and that his subordinates let him down.

He would say that he and his team “dropped the ball.”

The Catholic Church has shelled out a king’s ransom (many times over!) as a result of protecting pedophile priests and attempting to shield the church from scandal.  Rather than expose those priests so the law could deal with them properly, they reassigned them to other parishes in hopes that the problem would go away.

It didn’t.

The crude term for what the Children’s Hospital and the Catholic Church did is called CYA.  It roughly translates to: “We must not let this get out; we must protect ourselves at all costs.”

The Internal Revenue Service has come under fire in recent days for losing up to two years of emails dealing with critical issues which Congress is investigating. Furthermore, the agency failed to follow the law and report the missing files as soon as the discovery was made.

“We were trying to find the files,” the commissioner told a Congressional committee.

Even so, the law said they must report it. Why didn’t they?

“Well, someone dropped the ball.”

You might want to try that excuse with the IRS the next time you’re audited. “I’m sorry, I lost those files.”  Yeah, right.  Good luck with that.

To try to evade responsibility for our crimes and sins is human.  It’s been around as long as crimes and sins have been with us.

When Moses descended from Mount Sinai where he’d spent six weeks receiving the law from the Lord, he was dismayed to see that the Israelites had reverted to pagan forms of worship they knew in Egypt.  They were dancing (and by implication, more serious stuff; see Exodus 32:6 “they rose up to play”) and sacrificing to a golden calf.

So Moses called Aaron to him. His brother had been left in charge and was thus responsible.

“What did this people do to you, that you have brought such great sin upon them?” (Exodus 32:21)

Surely they drugged you, Aaron. They must have threatened you or something.

Aaron’s answer is classic. “You know these people.  They are bent on mischief.”

Blame the people. But wait. It gets worse.

“They came to me and said, ‘Make us a god who will go before us. As for this Moses fellow, we don’t know what’s become of him.”

“So, I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold, bring it here and throw it into the fire.”

“And brother, they threw that gold into the fire and–out came this calf!”

Yep. That’s what Aaron said.

I suppose he thought Moses was an imbecile to believe such a thing.  But ask any judge in a courtroom. The alibis and excuses they hear stagger the imagination.

This is why Scripture requires confession and repentance prior to forgiveness.  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us….” (I John 1:9).

As you know, the word “confess” in the Greek is homologeo, which means “to speak the same thing.”  We are saying about our sin the same thing God does, and not trying to cover it up.

It’s not easy. And it means we must take responsibility for what we have done.  Only grownups, so to speak, can pull this off.  Or little children.

“I have sinned.  I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”  (See Psalm 51 and Luke 18:13.)

It’s not enough to use Watergate-speak and say, “Errors were made.”  Or, “We misspoke.”

Own up to it.

Only when we do that will the Father forgive it.  No excuses, no alibis, and no fairy tales.  Just tell the truth.