Good or Evil

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. (Matthew 25:31-33 NIV)

The choice between good and evil is easy.  I choose good!  See?  Easy!  Unfortunately, temptation doesn't present itself that clearly.  If there was not some perceived good promised, there would be no temptation.  Sometimes the evil is simply disguised as good.

This is a good thing to remember when we are tempted to get on our high horse to judge others.  In the first place, we ourselves have somehow perceived judging another to be good.  But in the second place and even more importantly, we must remember that the person we are judging most likely is acting out of the good he or she found in their own decision... not from the evil that we might see in it.

When we face temptation, it is easy to justify ourselves... like the person who justifies unfaithfulness in marriage by thinking, "God wants me to be happy!"  Or the person who steals from their employer who thinks, "I didn't get a raise this year, so I am only taking what is due to me."  It sounds ridiculous to those of us not tempted that way - we can clearly see the evil in the choices.  But when the temptation comes, it is somehow not so clear.  And our own choices may seem right to ourselves, while others can see how wrong we are.

I believe most people want to make good choices, not evil ones.  I believe most people make more good choices than evil ones.  I am reminded of a movie from several years ago, "Crash."  It showed life as far more complicated than being able to separate people into sheep and goats.  The sheep have so many goat tendencies and the goats have a lot of sheep in them.  "Good" people do bad things and "bad" people do good things.  And most of the time, those we would label as "goats" believe they are sheep.

Any time we use power or possession for anything less than God's purposes we have succombed to temptation and we have seen only the partial good for our own purposes.  It is impossible for we humans to consistantly choose God's purpose.  The best we can do is to try a little harder and not be so hard on our brothers and sisters when they fail.

Holy God,
Help me to be a sheep a little more often than a goat and help me to see the sheep in others.  Amen.