Roadblocks and Detours

"Nothing gives me greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth". (3 John 1:4)

Deirdre Mundy reminds us that detours go around roadblocks and return to the straight path:

Rhetoric and Wisdom

According to his followers, Marcial Maciel wrote (or plagiarized) many beautiful things...But while words can lie, deeds don’t. Maciel lied. He stole. He raped and sodomized. He was not a wise man. He was not worthy of emulation. He cannot teach you how to follow Christ.

On Crooked Lines:

Sin is not a crooked line. It can't be made straight. It's not a detour, it's a roadblock. The only way to get a 'straight line' after sin is to repent and start over. God could not bring good out of Maciel's evil, because Maciel did not repent. He started sinning at the founding, and he kept piling sacrilege upon sacrilege up until the moment of his death. We can only pray that he was given the mercy of a deathbed conversion. But his congregation? His rules? His writings? His inspiring talks? They’re a rock slide blocking the road to holiness.

An evil man cannot create a good spirituality. A man seeking only his own will cannot teach others to seek God.

There is no crooked line here, unless, somehow, your own suffering as you leave this tainted soil helps to purify you for what lies ahead

UPDATE: Deirdre reminds us that the Legion also twists the expression "God draws good from evil":

God took the loaves and fishes and multiplied them into a feast. He turned water into wine. He did not take rotting food and transform it into a feast or mud and turn it into wine.