The Two ways?
That might sound like an affront to postmodern thinking. As if there are only two ways?
Right and wrong. Period.
Good and bad. Full stop.
Black and white, with no grey areas in between.
What you say goes and my opinion doesn’t matter.
As if actions are simply inherently good; and people don’t do seemingly good things from the wrong motivation!
Or that people can be misguided, forced, coerced into making wrong choices because of diminished responsibility!
I hear you well. Yet, however offended we may feel by the message of the Bible, the bottom line is that right and wrong exist.
Yes, we live in the postmodern age when a guiding principle is “different strokes for different folk.” We have knowledges instead of common knowledge. It’s an age of freedom of choice.
When we consider that we are individually gifted by God, each one special with a different contribution to make, that thought approach may not be completely off-track. But the posture implied in the postmodern stance is not so much that we are different but that everyone is free to decide what is right or wrong.
In modern secular society, this is the operating principle. People have rights. That’s the emphasis. Nothing’s wrong with that when we understand that people with rights can be wrong. Everything that we say and do, even if what we say think and do may be pleasing to us and our circle, is not necessarily right,
The bible warns in Proverbs 14:12 that
There is a way that seems right to a person,
but its end is the way to death.
Not everything that looks good or right is good and right. Some things are outright downright wrong; and if we want to please God, our minds must be set on thinking, saying and doing what is right in God’s sight.
The first psalm is a fitting introduction to the psalter, the Book of Psalms. It points out clearly that, broadly speaking, there are two ways. There is the way of the righteous and there is the way of the ungodly. If we believe that we are making the right choice in seeking to live for and with God, then we need to take the instructions contained seriously.
Lord God, help us to choose the right, the way that issues from and leads to your light. Amen.