Comedian Dave Chappelle created a character for his now-defunct comedy show a couple of years back, a white supremacist named Clayton Bigsby. As was common for him to do on the show, he portrayed the character himself. Bigsby emits foul(at least within cable television limits) and violent rhetoric, brimming with racial slurs of varying degrees of severity against blacks, Jews, Asians, gays and lesbians as well as other groups. One problem though...born blind, Bigsby does not realize that he himself is a black man.
  His biography, created for the character by way of a parodied Frontline documentary, explains that his keepers at the blind children's home where he was raised told him and the other blind kids he was white, in order to protect him from the stigma they assumed would accompany him by virtue of being the only black child. How he grew up to become a white supremacist is never explained. For those who are able to appreciate the disjointed irony, it's actually a rather ingenious mechanism for Chappelle to amplify the most common stereotypes of both blacks and whites in one face...with hilarious results.
  While the idea of a black white supremacist might be rib-tickling, what's certainly less funny is that many people in and out of the body of Christ maintain a similar preferential blindness to their sin. They hear a good, convicting sermon challenging them to a new level of righteousness. "Yeah...we need to bring holiness back to this town!", they say with much exuberance. As a young college student, I saw this scenario play out numerous times within the ranks of campus ministry. The masses would get fired up about something, go out and pursue it, and many times fall flat on their faces, left wondering where they went wrong.
  Most people who haven't accepted Christ, thinking they can get in by being a good person, living well and crossing their fingers later, also commonly suffer from what I like to call the Bigsby Syndrome: believing their heart is white as snow when it actually contains much blackness.
  Human nature compels us to remain woefully unprepared to confront the real truth that lies within every heart: the truth of hidden sin. It's not the big ones that get us a lot of the time. Rather, it's the small and nimble ones that dart in and out, leaving in their wake the confusion of believing we're on the right course and wondering why our lives or ministries aren't blessed.
  I John 1:7 brings to us a dose of reality: "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." While we may not go so far as to say we're sinless, many times any variant on the following statement is made: "Look, I haven't been doing that bad lately. It's been quite a while since I <insert pet sin here> or <insert pet sin here>. What's the holdup on God moving me forward in [life, ministry, blessings, desires]?" Statements like this are nearly equivalent to claiming to be without sin. And they are equally deceiving.
  Jesus promised that when the Spirit came into the world, he would "reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment(KJV)". It is vital for every believer to welcome this searching, and deal with whatever is rooted up. Then the promise of I John 1:9 can be made real: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." Let's cure the Bigsby Syndrome in our churches, so we can offer a more credible medicine to the world.