I read about an old sailor who repeatedly got lost at sea, so his friends gave him a compass. The next time he took his boat out, he followed their advice and took the compass too. But again he got hopelessly confused and had to be rescued by the water police. His friends, now totally frustrated, asked him why he hadn’t used the compass they’d given him. His reply was that the thing didn’t work, because every time he wanted to go north, no matter how hard he’d try to make the needle aim in that direction, it just kept on pointing southeast.” The old sailor was so certain he knew which was was north that he refused the one thing that could really show him the way.
It reminds me of people I know who have rejected the moral compass of Christ’s teaching, and now flounder in a confusion of their own making.