Acting Like It Can't Happen

Rod Dreher looks through Mark Sanford's love letters and concludes:

This man is not worthy of his wife or his three boys.

In fairness he offers this update:

Of course there can be forgiveness and reconciliation, and this marriage and family can be saved. One has to hope and pray for that. But healing begins with this adulterous husband and unfaithful father recognizing in his marrow the depth of his betrayal. There can be no healing without repentance, and no true repentance without authentic contrition.

Still, I don't understand the certainty with which some of us approach the personal lives of people we have never met. Whatever happened to the failings of others triggering some self-reflection, some assessment of our own works? When I see them foreclosing on the house next door, I don't talk. I check my credit.

What good is marriage if it doesn't humble men? What good is a creed that does not leave you self-aware and conscious of the evil that lay in the marrow of us all? What, precisely, is the point?

UPDATE: This...

I have often found it confusing how readily social conservatives pounce on any evidence of sins of the flesh, while remaining blithely unaware of their own pride, which (at least from a biblical perspective) is just as dangerous a sin.

...highlights something I may be missing. I didn't come up Christian. I'd like to hear some analysis of this from the devout.