Do the Right Thing

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Last night the pastor leading our Bible study mentioned how he sometimes set up small "tests" for
church-workers he interviews.  That it told him something about a person whether a person picked up or ignored small trash in the church' hallway, or straightened out a rumpled rug at the church' entrance.

I call that wisdom.  The things we do, especially the small things, say more about our heart-attitude than all the theology crammed into our brains.  In the pastor's examples, what candidates do shows their attitude toward the Church, in ways their academically brilliant ecclesiology doesn't.  And not coincidentally, shows their care for the cleanliness and safety of the church' people...who are the Church.

Scripture's wisdom and truth is that "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."  Our deepest operative attitude shows in what we consistently do.  And what we do consistently becomes our character, who we are.  Scripture's wisdom is therefore to "diligently guard your heart, for out of it are the issues of life."

My Christian take is that what we "guard" for in our operative beliefs, and acts, and character, is simply that we "do the right thing."  That seems the most basic social "good" we expect from others, and ourselves.  And because it's most basic, it's common to all human beings.

C.S. Lewis opens his Mere Christianity with an illustration that's always impressed me.  When people on a bus protest someone taking their seat, they appeal to some idea of right behavior that they seem to believe the other person (street-punk, Muslim, housewife, atheist, or the Archbishop of Canterbury) certainly knows, and recognizes as governing the situation.

Lewis also points out that we show we know and acknowledge this common "law" of right behavior when we break it.  We don't argue there is no such "law:" but rather, that some exception to the "law" justifies us in breaking it.

It's only the most basic manifestation of scripture's truth that God has written His law in men's hearts (Romans 2:15).  And because it's the most basic, everything else follows from it.  All our beliefs and actions toward what's "right" are the beginning of our moral sense, and our theology: the beginning therefore of everything we are, and become.

My Christian take is that God puts His simple, basic "law" in our hearts: and that He evaluates what we become in simple, basic reference to it.  In God's judgement...the only judgement that matters...a man who does the smallest right thing is the greatest righteous man.