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10:30 am Worship

Friday, July 11, 2025

Psalm 16: 5-8 (NEV)

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

I bless the Lord who give me counsel; in the night my heart instructs me.

I have set the Lord always before me;

Because he is at my right hand I shall not be shaken.

A rich and powerful man ordered a certain editor to carry out tasks he knew to be spiteful and wrong. The magnate wanted to destroy the career of one man and the reputation of another, and he had the power to spread misinformation and lies far and wide. The editor was to carry out that work. All he had to do was publish the information. His reward would be great.

He had watched the young oligarch fire executive after executive who had disobeyed his orders. His mind had quivered as he watched the last of them, a friend and mentor, departing the newsroom for the last time. The editor depended on his job, and so did his family. The only thing that held their Saturdays and Sundays together were the salary paid him each week.

What does it mean when we say we place God first in our lives? Such words are easy to repeat, and we say them reverently each Sunday. Then we go forth and confront life.

I have prayed in recent days concerning right and wrong, good and evil. My quandary: can we really know either one with certainty? Can anyone?

The answer, of course, is “yes!”

To a religious person, the solution seems simple. He or she can mouth daily prayers, listen intently for the moving of the Holy Spirit, search the scriptures daily, and seek the gift of discernment. And yet is this enough? I have watched many faithful people collide again and again when it comes to decisions concerning morality. Organized religion has proven somewhat useless in human history when it comes to morality. We seldom agree on right or wrong. We shout “God is on my side” as we carry out our atrocities.

I once watched a powerful politician try to justify his telling of lies which had badly hurt hundreds of people and had thrown an entire city into chaos. “If I have to tell a lie to win an election,” he said, “it is more important that I be elected to do the good things I intend to do. I will tell the lie.”

Countless people voted for him, and he was elected.

For a time, I turned to the mystics. They recognize the almost useless strivings of humanity and place their trust in a reality they can’t even see. They exhibit endless patience in their effort to know the invisible. But, as a professor once warned, “Be careful. Demons roam there too.” Human minds have the capacity to perceive evil as good, and this can happen when one depends only on the stillness in his or her own mind.

Because of that, many religious people honor the idea of rules. If only I can obey the rules, then I will be a person of faith. Thou shalt not lie. Such as these like the idea of outcasts. If one disobeys the rule, he or she shall be cast forth into the darkness. Is this too not a real part of the holy scriptures? Remember Matthew’s telling of the wedding feast. A man came to the feast dressed in the wrong attire, and the king ordered him bound and cast into the darkness. (Matthew 22: 13)

We must remember, though, that Jesus often stood against the rules, and that the Spirit advised Peter that nothing God created was unclean. (Acts 10) Jesus healed the sick on the Sabbath, and Peter entered the home of a Gentile.

I concluded, finally, God wants us to struggle in our decisions concerning right and wrong, good and evil. God wants us to grow, morally, and a moral man quickly discovers morality is not simple. It’s complicated. It’s a battle. It’s frightening. Real morality always involves a cross. We would do well to remember that.

Something must die for the righteousness of God to live.

What should the editor have done? I once asked another editor, and she said, “He should have obeyed the commands of his boss. The boss is responsible for the wrong, not the editor!”

What do you think?

The editor’s dream died. He surrendered the job instead of doing something he believed to be wrong. God gave him something better. Happiness. Wholeness. An entirely new life!

Hymn of the day: Light of the World (Here I Am to Worship). Online at Rossford UMC - Media.

Rev. Lawrence Keeler