stuff i think

Good vs. Evil vs. Right vs. Wrong

Okay, go ahead and read this, but understand I'm still forming these thoughts (and as Mike Bickle says in meetings at times, "I reserve the right to repudiate this in five minutes!")

I'm wondering if we haven't missed the boat in framing the battle of the ages as one of good and evil. Don't freak. I have an Apple sticker on my Volvo, but I haven't become a pipe smoking liberal. I believe it is a battle between those two - I believe that ultimate Good and ultimate Evil have been ultimate enemies since before the beginning of time when the enemy gathered his 1/3 of the troops and headed south...I'm just wondering if there's another way to discuss it.

What got me started on this train of thought was hearing people, once cornered by the reality of something they did being outside the bounds of what was supposed to have been none, justify their actions by insisting that, at least in their special circumstances, they were right. For example: a child is caught writing on the side of the van with a Sharpie (no, this did not happen at our house). When caught, he can tell by his father's reaction that he would have done better to NOT have done this, but he usually can cook up a reason why it was justifiied. "But Daddy, Jody Mae wrote on her daddy's van!" The point that the father is displeased seems irrelevant to the child because, at least in these circumstances, they feel they were right.

The obvious danger here is that most of us can convince ourselves that we're right in nearly any circumstance. We had special circumstances. We were justified in doing what we did. If everyone knew all the information, they'd know we were right.

Of course, we're not always right....but we're always willing to lean on our special circumstances as licensce to do wrong. Our version of "Right" often means we've found a way to explain doing wrong.

I'm flipping through Psalms this morning, doing a word search/study on 'right'. I'm finding a lot of verses like this one:

Psalm 19:8
The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.

It's helping me to guage my own actions - and to interpret the hand of God in my life - when I start from a grid of Him being right in all cases. He may be difficult to understand sometimes, but He's right. I may not agree, but He's right. At the end of the day, He's always right and I'm deciding whether I will be right with him.