One of American history’s interesting moments was when an American president from Texas spearheaded the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Lyndon Johnson, our 36th president, once said, “Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.” I’m fascinated by this because most of the time my problem is just the reverse. I know what is right but want to do something else. I have the same disease Paul talked about in Romans 7. He wrote, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out. For I don’t do the good I want to do, but instead do the evil that I don’t want to do.”
Yet now that I have said this, it isn’t that simple. When I was young most moral issues were clearly right or wrong. It was easy to call sin by its right name when I was twenty. Life was black and white. No longer do I see much black and white. I see many shades of gray. I read Ecclesiastes 3 and read that there is a time for everything. There is a time to kill. There is a time to rend. There is a time to hate. There is a time for war. And, yes, a time to forgive and a time to love.
Maybe President Johnson was wiser than I thought. Perhaps the most difficult thing of all is to know what is right.
Written on November 17, 2009
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