Life. right & wrong

Stupid criminals
Today we are talking about right and wrong. Before we begin, here are some of my favorite stories about some wrongdoers who can’t do anything right:

Louisiana: A man walked into a Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled-- leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer? Fifteen dollars.
San Francisco: It seems a man, wanting to rob a downtown Bank of America, walked into the branch and wrote, "This iz a stikkup. Put all your muny in this bag." While standing in line, waiting to give his note to the teller, he began to worry that someone had seen him write the note and might call the police before he reached the teller window. So he left the Bank of America and crossed the street to Wells Fargo. After waiting a few minutes in line, he handed his note to the Wells Fargo teller. She read it and, surmising from his spelling errors that he was not the brightest light in the harbour, told him that she could not accept his stick up note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and that he would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America. Looking somewhat defeated, the man said "OK" and left. The Wells Fargo teller then called the police who seized the man as he waited a the back of the line at Bank of America.

Oklahoma City: Dennis Newton was on trial for the armed robbery of a convenience store in a district court this week when he fired his lawyer. Assistant district attorney Larry Jones said Newton, 47, was doing a fair job of defending himself until the store manager testified that Newton was the robber. Newton jumped up, accused the woman of lying and then said, "I should of blown your [expletive] head off." The defendant paused, then quickly added, "-if I'd been the one that was there." The jury took 20 minutes to convict Newton and recommended a 30 year sentence.

Michigan: A pair of robbers entered a record shop nervously waving revolvers. The first one shouted, "Nobody move!" When his partner moved, the startled first bandit shot him.

My dad is retired from law enforcement. He always said that he had good job security because there will always be criminals. Maybe not smart criminals…

THE ETHICS DILEMMA
Good and bad. Right and wrong. Moral and immoral. Ethical and unethical. What do these terms mean? Are they just subjective and abstract ideas or something more than that? Let’s look to the book of Ecclesiastes on this topic.

Ecclesiastes 3:16-17 (NKJV) 16 Moreover I saw under the sun: In the place of judgment, Wickedness was there; And in the place of righteousness, Iniquity was there. 17 I said in my heart, “God shall judge the righteous and the wicked, For there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.”

Remember, the phrase “under the sun” means “in this life, if there were no eternity.” It applies to this entire passage. As it turns out, eternity has a huge impact on issues of right and wrong.

The first observation is:

Things are not how they ought to be.

Now, this is interesting, because the writer talks about wickedness in the place of good judgment and iniquity (sin) where there should be righteousness. (This was three thousand years ago. Do you see any correlations to today?)

How can we say how things ought to be? Where does that ‘ought’ come from? If there is no God and no eternity, then there is no such thing as ought or sin or righteousness. If we are the result of random cosmic actions resulting in our accidental existence, then there is no bigger plan and no ‘ought’. Things just are.

Let’s read on:

Ecclesiastes 3:18-22 (NKJV) 18 I said in my heart, “Concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals.” 19 For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. 21 Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth? 22 So I perceived that nothing is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his heritage. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?

Knowing right from wrong separates us from animals.

If there is no ‘ought’ then there just is ‘is’. If I want something I should just take it from you, like an animal would. If you are just an accident of nature and there is no eternity just this life to live, then might makes right.

If we follow this philosophy, we come to one unavoidable end:

Ecclesiastes 4:1-3 (NKJV) 1 Then I returned and considered all the oppression that is done under the sun: And look! The tears of the oppressed, But they have no comforter— On the side of their oppressors there is power, But they have no comforter. 2 Therefore I praised the dead who were already dead, More than the living who are still alive. 3 Yet, better than both is he who has never existed, Who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.

Without God there is only despair.

If we follow this road all the way to the end it goes to a place called ‘Nihilism’, literally the belief in nothing (From Latin ‘nihil’: “nothing). If there really is no God, no plan, no purpose, no eternity, no reason for ethical behavior, we can really believe and trust in nothing at all.

The meaningless life of an athiest
As an athiest writer, Greta Christina realizes she has a problem with facing death and disbelieving in an afterlife. Writing in a magazine popular with skeptics called the Skeptical Inquirer, she admits:
Death can be an appalling thing to think about. Not just frightening, not just painful. It can be paralyzing. The fact that your life span is an infinitesimally tiny fragment in the life of the universe, that there is, at the very least, a strong possibility that when you die, you disappear completely and forever, and that in 500 years nobody will remember you and in five billion years Earth will fall into the Sun—this can be a profound and defining truth about your existence that you reflexively repulse, that you flinch away from and refuse to accept or even think about, consistently pushing it to the back of your mind whenever it sneaks up for fear that if you allow it to sit in your mind even for a minute, it will swallow everything else. It can make everything you do, and anything anyone else does, seem meaningless, trivial to the point of absurdity. It can make you feel erased, wipe out joy, make your life seem like ashes in your hands.
She does find some hope, however. "What matters is that we get to be alive. We get to be conscious. We get to be connected with each other and with the world, and we get to be aware of that connection and to spend a few years mucking around in its possibilities. We get to have a slice of time and space that's ours." [Greta Christina, "Comforting Thoughts about Death That Have Nothing To Do With God", Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 2005), pp 50-51]

Is that it? Is that enough? Is that really all there is? Are you satisfied with that?

THE ETHICS SOLUTION
Things are not as they ought to be. Knowing right from wrong makes me different from the animals. Without God and His instructions for right and wrong there is only despair. Ethical questions can be so difficult sometimes. How do we break free from this ethical dilemma that we find ourselves in?

There is a simple answer to this dilemma of ethics. You’ll be amazed at how simple it is. I didn’t think of it myself. Jesus did, and it is recorded in the book of Matthew.

Be perfect.

Matthew 5:48 (NKJV) 48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Isn’t that simple? We just need to be perfect. Why didn’t I think of that?

PERFECT ETHICS
What did Jesus mean by “be perfect”? Does it mean be better than anyone else? Does it mean don’t make a single mistake? What does it mean?

The word ‘perfect’ here is the word ‘telos’ which means complete, finished or perfect. It gives the idea of being self-contained – not lacking anything. When you talk about the perfect tense in grammar, it is something that has already been completed.

Read Matthew 5:38-48 and you get a clear sense of what Jesus is saying. Here is the idea: When you do what’s right, let that be the end of things. Do right just because you know its right, no other reason. The doing of what’s right is an end in itself. What we often talk about as ethics and morality really isn’t because it has an unfinished element – what’s in it for me? If I am nice to those who are nice to me, it is imperfect because something from outside is needed: someone else being nice to me. If I am nice no matter what because it’s right, no matter how nasty the person is to me, that’s perfect.

When I do what’s right for no earthly reason, with heaven in mind, that is perfect.

1. Take your eyes off conditions. (“I’ll do it if the conditions are just right.”)
Reject ‘conditional ethics’.

If something is right do it no matter what, not just when the conditions are right. Sometimes people say to me, “I would come to church, but it’s really hard with my schedule” or “I would tithe but my financial situation is kind of tight.”
Like mom used to say, “No if’s, and’s or but’s.”

Returned money
Did you read the story in the paper last week about the employee at the Grocery Outlet in The Dalles who noticed an elderly couple left their wallet behind? She looked inside the wallet. There was no ID, but inside was $10,000 in cash. She could have easily said, “Wallet? What wallet?” I’m sure she could have used the money. But she didn’t keep it. She turned it into her manager. By checking the store video cameras and going back to the bank, they were able to identify the couple and give them their money back.

The employee said she never felt the least temptation to keep the money because giving it back was the right thing to do. It was that simple.

2. Take your eyes off potential outcomes. (“What will benefit me the most?”)
Reject ‘beneficial ethics’.

Joseph and Potiphar’s wife
Remember the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39? She continued to ask him to sleep with her but he wouldn’t do it. He said, “How could I do such a thing and sin against God?” Finally she got him in her hands and he had to struggle out of his coat to get away. She said he tried to rape her, and Joseph was thrown in jail.

I was reading about that in my Life Journal recently and I had this thought: “I wonder… if Joseph would have known at the time that by not sleeping with her he would be accused of sleeping with her and be thrown in jail, would he have still made the same choice?” I know that the answer is yes! Because character doesn’t negotiate. He did what was right no matter what the outcome would be. That’s perfect.

Confusion over outcomes
So many times we bring additional difficulty in decision making by trying to predict the future. I talk to many people who say, “If I do this, then this will happen… If I do that, than that will happen. So, what should I do?” Just do what is right. You’re not as good a fortune teller as you think you are.

The right parenting decision
I’m so proud of my daughter and son-in-law. As many of you know, they are going to be making us grandparents soon. My daughter told me that during an appointment, they were asked if they wanted to come in for some tests that can give an indication whether the child may be born with birth defects or not. They asked, “Could the problems be treated then?” “No,” was the answer. “Then why have the tests? What would our options be?” They were told, “Terminating the pregnancy.” “Then we don’t need the tests,” they said, “because that’s not going to happen.” Simple.

3. Take your eyes off the other person.
Reject ‘selective ethics’.

If you are good to certain people only, then don’t think of yourself as an ethical person. That isn’t ethics. That is politics.

Marriage and divorce
Let’s apply this to marriage.

A woman came in to see me about her marriage. She really wanted to be a godly wife and have a happy marriage, it was evident. The problem was that she didn’t respect her husband anymore. Some things had happened that had really changed how she respected him. She wanted some biblical input.

I told her that the Bible doesn’t say that respect is conditional. We seem to think it is, but it isn’t. The Bible says to respect your husband, not to respect him if he is deserving of respect. Respect him because it is the right thing to do, period.

That simple truth seemed to lift a great weight from her. It simplified everything.

I hear this all the time: “I don’t believe in divorce, but…” then they tell me all of the terrible things about their marriage. ‘Being perfect’ means that all that other stuff is absolutely irrelevant. What’s right, staying married or getting divorced? Staying married. It makes is very simple, doesn’t it?

Once that is answered then the real question can be asked, “What can I do to make this the most amazing marriage possible?” That’s the right question.

Conclusion
For many people, ethics is like a game of billards. You have to play the angles. Every decision has to be calculated. “What will happen if I play this bank shot?” “If I do this for him, what will he do for me?” “If I serve in this way, what will I get out of it?”

Stop playing the angles and shoot straight.

Take your eyes off of conditions, and outcomes and other people. Where should we put our eyes?

Hebrews 12:2 (NKJV) 2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him [eternity] endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

He came into our lowly condition and gave himself to the worst possible outcome to die for people who didn’t deserve it. Jesus did everything perfectly.