Why Is It so Damn Hard To Do The Right Thing?
The wisdom I've come to know is that this is who we are. And we are what we are, not because we are afraid of death, hardships, suffering, and lack; we're merely afraid of the unknown. And the context where our own unknown lives is our own unique fear condition. The condition context isn't the thing, it's the unknown that both creates and destroys our faith.
Read Romans 15:4 - There's still hope for us
"Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us. And the Scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled."
It's a huge mistake to believe that most people are mainly good in and of themselves, and a very small number of severely evil bastards tends to create the circumstances that arise to challenge the moral virtues and principles of those majority of otherwise good people. An awful lot of folks want to believe their "better angels" would prevail when pressed by the ethical conflicts of social dysphoria...
"there’s a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point" - General Corman Apocalypse Now
...Truth is however, that
“It's dangerous to confuse children with angels.” - Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!
I've found that no matter where we might find ourselves on the chronological spectrum of human life, we're all really just children to one degree or another. Especially in terms as to how it relates to our ultimate judge, King of the Universe, our Lord and Father God. Cause, you see, it really does always come down to (back to) his judgement. It's left up to us to see to it, but ultimately it's always about how He sees it. And yes he sees it all. And so people need a little help. And sometimes people need to be forgiven. And sometimes they need to go to jail. Rest assured no one escapes the final reel. So why wouldn't a wise person look to our Father for guidance? I mean, where you gonna run to escape from yourself?
"We might be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us". "What Most People Don't See - Is Just How Hard It Is To Do The Right Thing." "Running from the devil, but the debt is always gaining." [wisdom quotes from the movie Magnolia]
It's our damned condition, it's who we are. We're not children or angels. We're mankind. We're made in the imagine of God only, the holiness didn't make his creative cut. That elusive holiness genetic material was left off for the sake of the soul's eternal rest. God created us free from holiness and built in us instead the potential for it, and consequently evil potential as well. All that could or can be done is to leave it up to each individual man beast to make the sacrificial choice of presenting his own contextual peace offering, and making it pleasing to our Father God. He is our bail bondsman. It's the only true equitable means for getting at the truth. Naked and alone the truth must come clean if it's going to come home. And so it remains true that few are willing to travel that cleansing path.
We will pay dearly if we try and get off cheap. We can shake our fists at God and try to pawn off our own inbred evil onto him for the crime of creating us, but truth is, God has already often lamented that primordial deed and he has made his own sacrifices to pay the price for that fine. Our history is his rap sheet, and he's done his time, his account is paid in full, and we're left with no more excuses.
Our Father created us as potential. We had the potential to live both in faith and in fear. Before the fall of mankind our first parents did not fear the unknown. They didn't know what they didn't know. They listened to a demonic influencer and discovered they lacked something that they never had need of before. The first sin of man was in part the sin of anxiety, fear of the unknown, fear of what could be, of what might be. In that fear mankind chose to rely upon himself rather than continue in faith. And the rest is history. Our creator gave us everything we should need, and asked only that we keep our minds free from knowing evil. For God knows that knowing leads to doing.
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
"the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Friends,
The lesson today is you reap what you sow. But it's even deeper than that. It is said that if you sow wheat you won't reap cotton, you'll harvest wheat. I say, you'll harvest whatever the source of what you've sown has provided you with, and it may turn out that your harvest may not become what you had intended.
True story:
I planned for a crop of Bib Lettuce. I cultivated goodness into the soil. I purchased the seed, I planted and nurtured it. And I harvested a wonderful crop of Bok Choy. What the hell happened? Something wasn't right.
Did I cultivate it wrong? No.
Did I nurture it wrong? No.
Was I to blame at all?
I still don't know what happened, but if I had to guess I'd say the seed source failed in some way to maintain the integrity of their product. They probably didn't intend to offer up a lie in their advertising, it's just true that manure happens. Somewhere in the chain of command, someone (some link) dropped the ball. Their failure wasn't evil I'm sure, unless their really is some mad Bok Choy enthusiast who feels people shouldn't eat Bib Lettuce but instead should only eat Bok Choy.
What am I driving at?
The wisdom is, know the source of what you sow. Put in the effort to understand the source of your seed. Learn to recognize the right seed. And even when all that wisdom fails still to prevent the lie, learn to love Bok Choy. Be content with what the source has provided, it may be a blessing, it may become an angel in your midst. And never let these failures of the past prevent you from again trusting the source and sowing into the unknown future.