Many people look for justification for the type of bad actions that they consider to be relatively minor for them to commit, which they know intuitively are wrong or sinful, but they don’t want to be held accountable for them, for all sorts of reasons, of which the most basic reason why they don’t want to be labeled as some sort of sinner, is because they do not desire to consider their actions as actually crossing the line into sinfulness. That is to say, many a person wants to judge themselves on some sort of generous sliding scale, in which that judgment will always be relative and in their favor, because they only like to be compared against the worst of the worst.
In truth, what people seem to miss when they discount their sins and errors, is the fact that any sin, knowingly committed, or recognized later in retrospect as a sin, is something that takes a definite toll upon one’s soul, from the get-go For instance, it is important to recognize that when we are born, we are birthed into existence as a human being who has not committed a sin. However, as we mature, the responsibility of what we think, say, and do becomes more completely our own, whether we desire to own up to it, or not. So then, while people can play all sorts of mental games about their culpability and their participation in bad actions, the bottom line, is that more times than not, we know that what we have so done has not come forth from involuntary compulsion, but rather it is from our own volition.
The problem of what we perceive to be little sins and little lies, is that the more that we are willing to believe that what we have done wrong, is no real big deal, the more that we are inclined to thereby excuse it and to do something similar to that, if not the exact sort of thing, again, and then again. In other words, sin is the type of horrific act, that once we start upon and then subsequently do not demonstrate the self-control, good character, and discipline to correct, often becomes progressively worse. So then, to ignore our own sins and errant actions, or to have others not hold us accountable for such, because it all seems to be minor, places us upon a pathway that is only going to lead us to more trouble and subsequent moral pain, at a later time.
Indeed, the more that we sin and don’t believe such needs correcting, the more inclined and more susceptible we are to permitting ourselves to be open to committing more sinful acts, of which, the direction that we are on, places us thus in the position to get even deeper into trouble, because we are deliberately deadening our good conscience, more and more often. In fact, when we repeatedly ignore that nagging voice of conscience that tells us we ought not to be doing what we are just about to do, we find then, by silencing that good conscience, we have effectively deadened our conscience, so as to relieve ourselves of feeling guilty about that which we should and normally would feel guilty about.
In summary, the main problem with those little sins, isn’t so much the sin, itself, but rather the fact that we have opened the door that takes us away from the light and thereupon into the darkness, which isn’t going to end well, till we turn ourselves around.