I’m not exactly certain how to pen today’s post. It has something to do with hypocrisy. I can just feel it. Articulating it and putting it down on so-called cyber paper, however, is a completely different story.
As we watch life’s events unfold in recent months, I get a sense that many among us want to be our own deciders of what is good and true and right. We should be able to choose for ourselves what is right and wrong. We know best. We should be allowed to choose what is moral, ethical, and good.
There’s much within that thinking that I agree with. Too many times on this planet we seem to reserve the right to be the convictor of right and wrong within one another. Last I read, that job has a few more divine requirements than I will ever possess.
But I hear a chant that we should be the deciders of what’s individually best for each one of us. How many times do we hear the calls for independence? … to make our own choices?
In fact, watch each teen as they approach adulthood faster than a speeding bullet. What do they want arguably more than anything else? What do they crave — even exhibited by the experimentation phase that so many encounter? They are learning to decide for themselves what is right and wrong.
Yet while on one hand we chant that “yes, we know best,” on the other hand, it seems persons on all sides beg the government to be the moral slapper of the other side, so-to-speak…
Tell them… tell them what’s right and wrong!
Make them comply!
That’s it; set up a new law. Do it!
And yet, somewhere in there is where this hypocritical sense comes over me. We want to be able to choose what’s right or wrong, but we also often cry out for some official aspect of government to tell those who disagree with our stance or activity that they are wrong.
Perhaps we cheer on legislation.
Perhaps we amen the Supreme Court… (only when they agree with us, of course.)
My point is that we can’t have it both ways. We can’t say, “I should be able to choose the path that seems right to me,” but then advocate the government dictate the ethical path or standard for someone else.
The reality is that we cannot be the convictor of truth in one another. It’s not our job. We are not even capable of such. We are not the director of another’s behavior nor their conscience, nor their inner giver of peace, nor their decider of ethical activity. If we aren’t that for one another, then government can’t be that either. We can’t crave the freedom to choose but then ask government to interfere in the choosing for others.
I’m not exactly certain how to pen today’s post. It has something to do with hypocrisy. I can just feel it.
Respectfully,
AR