A friend told me a story a few months ago, about something that happened to him. What choice did I have but to believe him? He'd never lied to me before - from what I knew anyways. He told me the other day that the whole story was fabricated and something totally different happened. "Oh, I didn't tell you the real version of the story? Ha - oops!" he joked. My emotions for the moments following consisted of anger, sadness, disgust, and the realization that my friend wasn't very trustworthy anymore.
It would have been different had he come back and apologized for lying, for not telling the real story, and being sorry. But he wasn't - that was the hard thing. He listed reasons why he lied - and not to me either, to lots and lots of people - trying to justify his actions. It was pretty disheartening, to say the least.
The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that I do the same thing. Not with lying, necessarily, but there are definitely things I do that I try to justify in my own mind to make them 'okay.' Are my justifications any worse than my friend's? Absolutely not. We all have a conscience, and it's our decision whether we listen to it, or go against it. If we go against it, of course we have to make it 'right' somehow. According to God, that's not right. So this is me telling myself, to stop justifying wrong things and just do the right thing. Easier said than done, but do hard things, right?
It would have been different had he come back and apologized for lying, for not telling the real story, and being sorry. But he wasn't - that was the hard thing. He listed reasons why he lied - and not to me either, to lots and lots of people - trying to justify his actions. It was pretty disheartening, to say the least.
The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that I do the same thing. Not with lying, necessarily, but there are definitely things I do that I try to justify in my own mind to make them 'okay.' Are my justifications any worse than my friend's? Absolutely not. We all have a conscience, and it's our decision whether we listen to it, or go against it. If we go against it, of course we have to make it 'right' somehow. According to God, that's not right. So this is me telling myself, to stop justifying wrong things and just do the right thing. Easier said than done, but do hard things, right?
Wow! Excellent correlation... I've never thought of it that way and what you said was very convicting. Thank you!
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