In Our Own Eyes

There also you and your households shall eat before the LORD your God, and rejoice in all your undertakings in which the LORD your God has blessed you.

“You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes; for you have not as yet come to the resting place and the inheritance which the LORD your God is giving you. (Deut. 12: 7-9, NASB)

And the man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and household idols and consecrated one of his sons, that he might become his priest. In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes. (Judg. 17: 5-6, NASB)

The sons of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family, and each one of them went out from there to his inheritance.

  In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judg. 21: 24-25)

WE are constantly at odds with ourselves. On one hand, we want to do what is right in the sight of the Lord, but on the other, we are constantly directed by what is right in our own eyes. For most of us, too often what is right in either case is influenced more by the world than the Word.

The world is a place of moral and ethical relativity. We see this creep into Christian thinking in the sliding scale we have for sin. We see some sins as more deadly than others. For example, we seem to think that homosexuality is somehow more abhorrent to God than lying, and we forget which one made it to the top ten. Sin is sin, and in God’s eyes all sin is deadly. Since all of us sin, where does that leave us?

In the same way we forget that “an eye for an eye” was not intended to be a standard of retribution, but of consideration towards others. The over-riding principle behind the law is to use it as a gauge of our own morality. It is in reality a reminder that the things we do to others should be balanced against what we expect others to do to us. The intent is that we need to consider what injury we are willing to suffer before we injure to our neighbor. This is summed up in what we commonly call the Golden Rule: Do to others what you would want them to do to you.

But we turn that entire concept on its head. We use the possibility of injury or unfavorable treatment as a justification for preemptive injury and unethical behavior by ourselves. We rely on stereotype to create a whole system of misbehavior that is “right in our own eyes”. It is all right to pad insurance claims because after all “all insurance companies over-charge anyway.” We work things to our own advantage because after all, “we deserve it.” We can steal supplies from our work because we are over worked, underpaid, and the company won’t miss it. Really?

This is the world’s thinking and has no place in ours. There is no way we can stack such behavior against the God’s commandments and come out thinking we are moral, or just, or even justified. Yet we establish our own standard of justice for others and exonerate ourselves at every turn. In the days of the judges, there was no king in the land and everyone was a law unto himself. And chaos reigned.

Today, we have government and we have laws and still there are times that chaos reigns because we all set our own standards for what laws we will keep and which we will break. We feel moral because we don’t kill and we don’t steal, perhaps. But we constantly ignore other laws we see as a nuisance or inconvenience. Yet we feel superior to our neighbors because in our own eyes we are doing what is right. And we are pleased with ourselves.

We have not yet moved into the land that God has prepared for us. We cannot allow ourselves to forget that obedience is the cost for admission. As Christians, we have to constantly balance what we see as right with what God teaches us is right. The two greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, and soul and mind and strength and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The welfare we have to consider is not our own, but our neighbor’s. Then we can do what is right in both God’s eyes and our own.