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I guess most of us have encountered people who have been extremely nice to us a number of times but have also caused hurt on a few rare occasions. However, have you ever felt the latter overpower the former in your mind so much so that it becomes difficult to look at this person with the same affection you had before? Recently I have been unable to put aside the bad parts and focus on the good in some instances, which disturbed me.
Much to my surprise I found during church service our pastor give a sermon along those very lines. From what he said it turns out that God is no different from me in this matter. In His eyes too our good deeds are lighter than our evil ones. So that if the world's greatest philanthropist or missionary was to put all his hundreds or thousands of acts of kindnesses on one side of a balance, they would still weigh much less that the few sins he committed kept on the other side.
In the film Gandhi there is a scene (see video here) in which when a Hindu man confesses to have killed an innocent Muslim child during the India-Pakistan partition riots in revenge for the Muslims killing his son, Bapu tells him that as a way out of hell he should adopt a Muslim orphan as his own son but raise him as a Muslim and not a Hindu. However, I have come to learn we can't escape the consequences of our actions by such a "making up" scheme. You can't play dirty tricks and keep worshipping God simultaneously in the hope that He will not punish you for those very devious acts.
Indeed it takes a lot to gain another's love and respect, but little to lose it. In the mathematics of life, both the transcendental one here on earth and the eternal one to come, the pluses don't simply cancel out the minuses.
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