Great Regulars: Sin regarded as a transgression of rules

is just another way of worshipping the idol of certainty, the conviction that if one does this and not that one will be saved. But I have found that it is the failure to be kind--or, worse, to be deliberately unkind--that leaves a stain on the soul that no effort of one's own can erase. A whiskey too many or an inappropriate tumble in the hay reveal only that one is human. Unkindness reveals that one has fallen short of the human.

from Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: A lacerating sense of sin

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