Forgive me, Father, the flesh is weak

No retributive posture cancels out the consequence of the act. Christian ethics claims the opposite; that a heart willing to renounce the deeds it had perpetrated, whether physicalized action or by thought alone, will have transmuted through this intent some culpability into something finally expiable. Much in denying this possibility is made of the fact that it proves a psychological want met with metaphysical approval; that is, we want to believe that all we have done--those things which we would eschew, those we regret, those that have had regrettable consequences--can be effaced through an appeal of intent; through sheer desire to have it not have been so; and that because this is a feature of our psyches; and because our psyches exist in a sense to safeguard our physical selves, our psyches then proceed to provide us with an explanation, a means "out" by which those things that startle us, those behaviours we regret, lose their power to hinder the physical self. We can continue, these naysayers say, because we believe something external to us has granted us forgiveness, has wiped out those acts and their consequences. It is purely an article of faith, I suppose, as to whether this is so or not. The typical atheistic professional might see faith as a sort of mental disorder (certainly the psychiatrists and psychologists who are responsible for the creation of the DSMV would at least in heart concur, though they dare not voice it lest the mob de-legitimize the entire Clergy of Mind by disbanding it). My own belief is the flesh falters where the mind can surge ahead; and that whether divine or mental, the difference is finally negligible; that is to say, I'm capable of believing both at different times. In the foxhole I would as any other immediately cling to the former. This does not make it untrue.