Trigger warning: I am about to admit to a misdeed. I hope it doesn’t come as too much of a shock. After all, I humbly acknowledge how easily and reasonably one could mistake me for perfection personified. It happens all the time.

The fact is, I once committed an act so hideously immoral that, even now, years later, I shudder at the memory. Present purposes do not require that I share the details; however, my conscience yearns for the cleansing effect that comes only with full disclosure. So here goes.

You see, Dear Disappointed Reader, there was this one time when … when …

Deep breath, Steve. You can do this.

… when I put tikka masala sauce on a hotdog.

I shall take no offense should you decide to be done with me and turn the page right now. No one would blame you for refusing to further sully your eyes on the work of a perpetrator of so foul a culinary deed. Yet if you’ll bear with me, it is not the deed itself on which I wish to focus but on what a decent person does after coming to terms with “I blew it.”

The process begins with remorse, that is, feeling bad about what you’ve done. Deep-set remorse can be helpful when it moves beyond handwringing and on to admitting, apologizing, and making amends. To wit: Having admitted the tikka-masala hotdog transgression, I now wish to apologize for it. And while it’s not possible for me to un-profane the hotdog (much less un-taste it), the least I can do toward making amends is to vow never to repeat the offense and warn others against committing a like folly.

For some, there is another step. As if admitting, apologizing, and making amends weren’t enough to take all the fun out of misbehavior, there are deities out there who expect you to obtain their forgiveness. Some make it easier than others. For the most part, Allah and Yahweh require no intercession, cheerfully settling for forgiveness requests via personal prayer. Born-Again Christian Jesus makes it pretty easy too, asking only that you confess him as your personal savior. Catholic Jesus provides a cozy confessional and recommends reciting an Act of Contrition or two. Jehovah’s Witnesses’s Jehovah may require your fellow Witnesses to shun you. As for Scientologists, chances are they’ll remove the blame from you and place it on thetans. Not to worry. Thetans, I’m told, are no match for a sizable check.

The nice thing about all of the above is that once your deity has forgiven you, you’re absolved. It’s as if your dastardly deed never took place. Every trace of it will disappear, including whatever notes a meddlesome angel jotted in that infamous book used for ratting out sinners on Judgment Day.

As an added bonus, forgiveness from on high offers a nifty way to turn a victim into a perpetrator and a perpetrator into a victim. This is thanks to passages such as “If you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” and “judge not that ye be not judged.” I was an observer in a meeting of church leaders where heads shook and tongues tsked over a teenager’s inability to forgive a scout leader who had molested him. The kid, the council decided, needed a stern lesson in good Christianing. After all, the scout leader had repented! God had forgiven him! Therefore, the molestation was erased. It was thus incumbent upon the teen to forgive the scout leader too, lest the teen find himself in danger of hellfire.

Likewise, I’m aware of people who were counseled to forgive and return to violent, abusive spouses (“I spoke with him—he’s really sorry”) … people advised to “let it go” after being swindled by a fellow congregant (“you’re not being very forgiving—how dare you judge that person?”) … and even a state legislature that gave a standing ovation to one of their own who confessed to having molested a fifteen-year-old (“you gotta respect the courage it took for him to confess—after the fifteen-year-old went public”). That, apparently, is how some people think forgiving one another the way the Lord forgives works.

If you buy their logic, then the lesson is clear. If you can get God to forgive you for doing something awful to someone, then the person you harmed must get over it or risk appearing in the above-referenced, infamous book maintained by the above-referenced, meddlesome angels.

Thus, you can harm people and send them to hell in the wake of your receiving a clean slate. It’s absolution with a side of schadenfreude, which is almost enough to put the fun back in misbehavior.