Glad you decided to stop by! Welcome! I hope that good health and good food have been keeping up with you all this week.
You know, a boomerang thought just hit me a while ago. A boomerang thought? Don’t go looking for it in the dictionary. It isn’t there yet. I just made that one up today. Let’s see… Okay, here’s my definition. A boomerang thought is a thought or idea that you haven’t thought about in a long time. Then, out of the blue, it boomerangs back for you to think about it again. Uh… But before this definition becomes a boomerang thought, I probably… Yeah. I should get back to this Saturday’s blog already in progress.
My boomerang thought today was the kind of thought that makes you stop what you’re doing and tilt your head to the side.
It hit me like a special news bulletin. Okay. Not that hard. But more like when you discover a new ding on your credit report. My boomerang thought was about why is it so much trouble to do the right thing? And why is it so easy to ignore doing the right thing? You ever wonder?
For example, a cop pulls you over for speeding, and asks you if you know how fast you were going. For some reason, the first words you might hear yourself saying is, “Why no, officer. I just noticed my speedometer was acting up a minute ago, and I was on my way to the car repair shop when you stopped me.”
Or while you’re backing out of a parking spot at Wal-Mart, in a big sweaty hurry… Hold it. Let me be the first to confess. I’m one of those guys who doesn’t have a perfect record for doing the right thing. You probably have already guessed that, huh? What do you mean you guessed???!!! Just for that I might misspell a couple of words in the next paragraph. Naa. I don’t like the wavy red line that appears under the misspelled words I type. So moving on.
Let’s use myself as a guinea pig for a second. Doing the right thing, at one time in my life, usually meant doing the right thing only if it didn’t cost me anything or get me into trouble, or when I was trying to make myself look like a saint. And… Sometimes I did the right thing just because it was right. But whenever I got myself in a jam, I could instantly feel the pressure building up in me against doing the right thing.
Let me just mention that doing the right thing isn’t all that hard to do when there’s no pressure of getting into trouble involved. Then it’s as easy as pinching your little brother. But okay, here’s the deal. Most of the world’s population, left to their own opinions of how to handle doing the right thing, are as mixed as crayons in a box.
One opinion is that doing the right thing is the right thing, but only if you don’t have any other choice. Another popular opinion is that if doing the right thing gets you busted, why do it? And then there’s always the opinion that you should always do the right thing whenever there is a personal benefit to be gained.
When we’ve done something wrong, doing the right thing afterwards, means a whole lot of pressure we usually don’t really want to deal with. Ever wonder what that pressure is, or why it’s so powerful? That pressure is, the way I understand it, the same pressure a person feels when they get into a car chase with the police. -Which is the pressure to escape punishment at all cost.
There were times in my past when I have told a dozen lies to keep from getting involved with doing the right thing. And most of the time it worked out pretty well for me. That is, if I didn’t get exposed as a liar. But on those many occasions when my approach to doing the right thing didn’t get the job done, then double trouble! But hey, not doing the right thing has always been an attractive proposition for an escape artist to think about. It offered me a forty/sixty chance of beating the heat. For an amateur gambler, them ain’t bad odds! So in most cases, I took the gamble. Forty/sixty odds…? -That I wouldn’t get caught…? Are you kidding me?! Those odds were always good enough for me!.
But now, looking back, before Jesus changed my life, I can see what avoiding doing the right thing was doing to me. I had became like Senator Palpatine before he became Emperor. I always made sure that people only saw my good side, while I kept my dark side hidden. Lying got easier and easier, and I got better and better at it. Lying, and doing my version of the right thing, had become my gold standard. Back then there was very little question about whether or not I was ever in the mood for doing the right thing. -Not when I could fall back on the world’s most popular opinions for why a person should avoid doing the right thing.
You know… There was another thing I remember about myself, back before I became a Christian. It was that the less I cared about doing the right thing, the more of a fan I became of doing what suited my idea of what was right and what was wrong. Back in those days I had a lot of people fooled into believing that I was a really nice guy. But now I realize that I was really something more like a criminal without a record.
Let me think back… When did I start having trouble doing the right thing? I think it happened to me about the same year I learned to stop saying “goo goo ga ga” and learned how to talk. Sayyyyy! I think I’d better hurry up and get to the point I’m trying to make.
Doing the wrong thing is easy when we think there’s no one around to catch us at a bad moment. But now, what would happen if we knew for a fact that someone was watching us twenty-four hours a day, and taking notes?
Forty years ago was when I first realized what doing the wrong thing really meant. God helped me to clearly see the difference between doing the wrong-right thing compared to doing the right-right thing. -And also the problem with thinking that if we do enough of the wrong-right thing, it would block out a few of the just wrong things that we do. The wrong-right thing is doing right things that we think will give our reputation a good credit boost. I had to put this to see if it made any sense. Judges?
The first twenty-seven years of my life I saw doing the right thing as something I didn’t need to really worry about all that much. If I told a lie, instead of the truth, and got away with it, nothing seemed to happen. If I stole something, instead of earning it, and I didn’t get caught… …Nothing seemed to happen. If I didn’t do the right thing and I got away with it… Nothing seemed to happen. So I didn’t see any reason for me to change back then.
Forty years ago, for me, doing the wrong thing wasn’t as big a problem as it is for me today.
When I came to the understanding, by faith, that the universe didn’t create itself… …And that the intelligence behind creating the universe was someone who had His eye on me 24/7… I began to feel differently about doing the right thing. Mostly I do the right thing now because I want to show God that I care about what He cares about, and that He’s my Boss.
Now-a-days, not doing the right thing ain’t as easy for me as it used to be. Caring about what God cares about has really changed me a lot. Nope. Never to the level of me becoming perfect. I’ll never reach that level. -But I did get changed to the point of me becoming a way different guy than I use to be forty years ago.
By my faith, I know that God is, and that He’s all powerful-important. It’s good to have Him on our side when things get scary. Trying to get along without Him is a very real option. But is it doing the right thing?
I really have enjoyed sharing with you today. Thank you for reading. And may God protect you and all the people in your life.