What does it take to be good?
A post from Justin Deschamps (Just In Stillness) Substack. Read more here
by Justin Deschamps, May 19th, 2024
Why is there so much corruption, lies, deception, jealousy, cheating—you name it?
I think the reason why is that our culture, from presidents and kings to paupers and bums, has been corrupted, intentionally. Why? Because when a culture is corrupt, people in that culture are easy to deceive and manipulate. The people can be encouraged to go along with evil and think it’s justified, even that doing evil is good and right.
Ignorance of Righteousness: the Math of Goodness
Doing what’s right and good, being trustworthy, is as clear as math—2 + 2 = 4—but can we know 2 + 2 = 4 without knowledge of mathematics? If our culture doesn’t teach us how to be good, what the standard is, we can be deceived and tricked into corruption.
How many politicians are tricked into becoming instruments of evil when their political careers often started with dreams of being good?
Being good requires literacy in goodness. Our culture, through scripture, fables, and childhood stories shows us why lying to our fellows is bad and honesty is good. Without goodness literacy, we can be deceived by the scribes and pharisees of the modern age.
Without knowing what goodness is, how to identify it, and how to embody it there’s no way to guard ourselves against the temptations of cultural greed, malice, cheating, arrogance, lies, and unjust enrichment. Everyone else is doing it to get ahead, why not us?
Without being taught how to be good and what trustworthiness is we can be made to believe that wars are good, that abortion is good, that taking drugs are good, that cheating our friends and family is OK if justified—even that evil isn’t bad and God isn’t good.
The Narrow Path
It’s easy to see that doing the right thing is a narrow path, a choice, that requires effort, courage, selflessness, discipline, and dedication.
Devotion to our families, friends, and children is a narrow path because how many lies does it take to hurt others and destroy relationships?
How much theft does it take to destroy trust?
Avoiding greed and unjust enrichment requires honesty and transparency, a commitment to our fellows to make us accountable. This is a narrow path.
Not abusing power in office or as the head of a business requires accountability, to your partners, employees, and customers. It requires courage, faith, and the sacrificing of greedy ambitions. This is a narrow path.
On either side of the narrow path, the path of goodness, righteousness, of faith in God and family, there are oceans of ever deepening corruption and evil. It’s all to easy to slip into these gullies along the narrow road of truth, justice, and goodness. Before we know it, we’ve fallen off that narrow path, hurting ourselves, our communities and our nation.
When a culture is whitewashed with false trust and shallow goodness, there are no examples left to teach and guide. Within a few short generations, the culture has quietly shifted so that it encourages and even justifies corruption to get ahead.
Is this not an accurate description of the modern world?
Courage and Redemption
With courage, we can face the corruption in front of us and in our own lives to make things right.
One of the greatest gifts of life is that courage to do the right thing can undo a life time’s worth of corruption with a few acts of confession and repentance, to ourselves and our maker, to our friends and family, and to our communities and nation. The reward is a better life, better relationships and better world.
A few men or women can shine brightly in a corrupt world, just as our founding fathers of the United States did when they fought the evils of their day.
There were only 3% of the then colonialists who did what they could to free the colonies from the corruption of King George. Their courage changed things forever.
Not sure how to make sense of this? Want to learn how to discern like a pro? Read this essential guide to discernment, analysis of claims, and understanding the truth in a world of deception: 4 Key Steps of Discernment – Advanced Truth-Seeking Tools.
Stillness in the Storm Editor’s note: Did you find a spelling error or grammatical mistake? Send an email to [email protected], with the error and suggested correction, along with the headline and url. Do you think this article needs an update? Or do you just have some feedback? Send us an email at [email protected]. Thank you for reading.
Source:
https://justindeschamps.substack.com/p/corruption-is-easy-and-goodness-is
Support our work! (Avoid Big Tech PayPal and Patreon)DIRECT DONATION
Thank you! Truth. GOD BLESS YOU!
You did really good in the article, pieced perfectly together. I personally think It would be best religiously wise if a person needs a God to follow after Albert Einstein’s idea on God and he said he did believe in God but a God of harmony but not the God of his ancestry.
The bible is faked and there is tanglable proof that the bible is fake. A good example of this is in Matthew 12 where Jesus is with his disciples in a corn field.
The first appearance of corn introduced into Europe was in Spain in the year of 1493 broght by Christopher Columbus. That was 1500 years after the bible story but there are a lot of other bible verses that don’t belong in the fake book..
Quoting Larry Holzwarth of History Collection.
“In the King James Version’s Gospel of Mark, the resurrected Jesus appears to several people, including his closest followers, known as the disciples. In the oldest extant texts of Mark’s gospel, the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples is not present. The chapters of Mark following the Crucifixion were added sometime in the second or third century, what became in the King James Version Mark 16:9-20.
Copies of the Gospel of John, in Greek, reveal that for its first three centuries in existence there was no mention of the tale of Jesus confronting a crowd about to exact justice upon an adulteress by stoning her. In the story Jesus challenges the crowd, telling them for the one among them, if any, initiating the punishment by casting the first stone. When the crowd disperses Jesus too tells the woman that he will not condemn her. The story is among the most famous verses of the Bible.
In the Gospel of Luke, as Jesus was dying upon the cross, he addressed the two criminals being crucified alongside of him, though the version currently appearing in the Bible is at odds with the earliest extant copies of the gospels. Another change in Luke, which does not appear in the early copies of the Gospel attributed to him, is that Jesus asked forgiveness of his executioners, because they did not know what they were doing. The oldest known copies of Luke’s gospel do not recount the forgiveness bequeathed from the cross, the story was added in the fifth century in the Greek documents. As with many additions, it was likely added to reflect the Christian teaching which had evolved by that time.”
So those are a few examples of a faked book.
Than you have to remember there is no secular written history of Jesus. He could have kidnapped children, raped and killed them and buried them on the edge of the sea of Galilee while his followers thought he was God, yet people sit in temples and worship him. And there is no history of him outside of his followers.
Conclusion. It doesn’t match dna, it doesn’t match verifiable science, it doesn’t match the truth.
So something is seriously foul at play and you should walk slowly and carry a big stick.