Doing evil is easy. Being a bad person is easy.
I was talking the other day with someone who was making fun of kindness and who took great pride in being “scary” to people with her ways. I wanted to challenge her (something I thought about later). A challenge to be a good person for a week. Or even just a day. A challenge to think, act and do what is good and right for a single day. None of us would make it.
It’s not easy pursuing righteousness.
- It’s much easier for our thoughts to drift to bad places than to choose to think pure and righteous thoughts.
- It’s much easier to say what we are thinking than to control our tongue and speak appropriately
- It’s much easier to give in to the fears and worries of this life rather than to act wisely and rest in faith in HIm
Doing that which is evil comes naturally. Righteousness is more in line with who we are, but it is typically not our default setting in many areas of our lives.
Unfortunately for some doing wrong and evil at ever-increasing levels makes people feel powerful. Invincible. And not weak.
This was the kings of Israel. One after the next after the next did what was evil. And it seemed like they were in a doing evil competition. Each one doing “more evil than all who were before him” (1 Kings 16:25).
When it gets to Ahaz, it again says he did even more evil than all who were before him if that were possible. Even acting “as if following the sin of Jeroboam son of Nebat were a trivial matter…” (1 Kings 16:31).
Each of these evil kings worshiped and served and Baals and Asherahs. Why? Because they were all about sex any way you want it. Sounds crude but it was more crude than that. Yet it was much easier to give in to the “gods” who promoted this rather than a God who put restraints on sexual activity.
Compromise comes quickly in our lives when we don’t get to fulfill the lusts of our flesh, the lust of our eyes and the pride of life. The Bible becomes “outdated” or as I heard recently, “95% true.” But then it becomes us who decided what is the 5% that is not true, mainly if it doesn’t fill the lusts of our heart.
Righteousness is a journey. It has highs and lows, challenges and victories. But it is always worth it.
Evil is simply a slide. An easy one. And one that will never fulfill the deepest longings of the heart.
