It's Sunday and the sun just came up. It is a beautiful sky that God painted this morning. It goes perfectly with my choice of Door County Heavenly Caramel Coffee for my morning beverage. With the radio playing some soft music in the background it is time to write.
Romans 13:1-5
Let every person be subject to the ruling authorities. For there is no authority accept from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed and those who resist will incur judgement. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. Would you no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain,. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore on must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake on conscience.
Yesterday I started this two day series on doing the right thing and making the choice to not do right being sin. Many people see choices as their option to exercise their right to avoid doing the right thing because of some immediate discomfort or long term impact to their own lives. This can be a stop sign like we discussed yesterday or a pandemic event.
During this Covid 19 pandemic crisis I have seen people make many unselfish choices to keep their part of the world healthier and safer. Now in many instances this was a costly choice and at times the information changed daily because the scientists and officials were learning as they went. I believe they are still learning new approaches daily.
In one choice that many people made and it really wasn't a choice was to quarantine themselves if they presented with any symptoms for 14 days and even this was unclear if it was 14 days or 15 days. I know of people who were ill with two or three days of the grocery list of symptoms and chose to comply and quarantine for let's say two weeks for simplicity. At that time there weren't enough tests to go around and you just had to assume you were infected with the virus if the symptoms presented within you. Then there were others who blew it off and after a couple of days if they felt better. At that time they returned to their normal lives . Now they might have started washing their hands more but that was about it for compliance. They chose to gamble and roll the dice that they weren't carriers of the virus. Now later as testing has become more readily available it was discovered that they were actually ill and who knows how many people they exposed to a deadly gamble. This is a result that we will never know the consequences. Two people were recently placed under house arrest for going out when they knew that they were contagious. This is very extreme.
Now many of those folks who complied lost time from work, businesses closed, bills are still going unpaid and maybe they were carriers of the virus or maybe they weren't. But they chose to do the right thing even though the cost was heavy.
This is just one example of knowing to do right and not doing it. I could write about this subject 365 days in a row and give a new example every day. What we see at the center of when right is avoided, ignored, and fought is usually selfishness, ignorance and fear. The internet can be a wonderful source of information and this blog wouldn't be going out to you without it. Yet, given any situation you can find one, two or three hundred different views of any subject. You then can choose which one best fits your situation and helps you justify a selfish choice to ignore the right thing to do. Or you can claim ignorance.
Christians our ultimate authority is God and His Word, not Google. We tend to forget that.
Food for thought.
Marty
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