An article written by my father, the Rev. C. Thomas Paige, as it appeared in the Tri-State Defender on the date shown.
As I got on the bus a few days ago, I heard the closing sentences of a conversation and the young lady was saying, “Yes, it’s right, but why do people object to doing right so badly?” Yes, what is so fascinating about doing wrong that so many people would rather do wrong? There seems to be something innate in people that makes them enjoy the fact that they are getting away with something. Children cheat on examinations not because they don’t know but because they like the idea of having something to boast about later. People go along with the crowd or keep silent when they know that a word from them could prevent human suffering and embarrassment. Some vital question arises and rather than take an opportunity and lose a few friends, we won’t become involved. Our non-committal selves have brought our moral, social and spiritual levels to their present all-time low.
Young people like this young lady all over the world stand on the sidelines and watch our behavior on the international, national, local and home levels and see so much wrong going on. They wonder why we resist doing what is right. They know that it is right and they know equally well that what the adults are doing is wrong. Right and wrong of late have become playgrounds of compromise. We have compromised too long! Once again we must become realistic about the whole thing. If a thing is right, it is right without any alteration. If it is wrong, the same is equally true. There is no middle ground. A few days ago, speaking of right and wrong, a man said they are as black and white, just black and white, and never a mixture of the two that will bring about grey.
Sometimes I wonder if we have degenerated to such spiritual, moral and social pygmies that we have lost all insight of what is wrong and what is right. From all that goes on about us at the hands of many of our trained minds and cultivated hearts, it sets my heart quite in a flame to see us behaving so. We live in a day of watered down everything. To live in a society where strong ties determine the behavior of people is more than many can or will endure. The less exacting a proposition is the more popular it is in the minds of many of us.
We like to think in terms of freedom. There is something about freedom that fascinates all of us. A restrained child, regardless how small, resents the idea of being restrained. As soon as he can kick his legs as he wants to, the tears leave his face and a big smile takes its place. But doing right places certain restrictions upon us and as far as many of us are concerned, restraints are the most unwanted elements in any life. To do right places upon each of us certain disciplinary measures. No one can be foot loose and fancy free and do right.
A long time ago the apostle Paul admonished his hearers to put on the whole armor of God. As one goes out into the world to do right, he needs just that. He must be able to withstand the jeers of the crowd, the persecution of the next crowd, the ostracizing of another crowd, and so on. Many people know that such and such a thing may be right but they object to the idea of a price being paid for being right. Nothing is more unpopular today that trying to do what is right. The more one tries, the more lonely is his life. The premium for being good and doing right is rather low. It requires more of everything to do what is right and yet, from the standpoint of appreciation, love, social prestige and the like, few things are less rewarding.
Now with all of this talk about doing right and its rewards, someone may think, “well, why do right?” Just this: if you are looking for the passing, fleeting rewards for your energy, doing right will mean little to you. But to those people who want the lasting, intangible rewards of life it will mean a happiness that all the money or material gains in life will never be able to buy.
The young lady who wonders why people know, but refuse to go along with, what is right knows that people have not yet arrived at the moral, spiritual and social maturity where the better things in life have become an integral part of their lives. Only when people mature to the point where they have personally come to grips with the finer things in life will life ever mean anything to them. In far too many instances, we are more concerned with the crowd than we are about the moral issues at stake. We find ourselves doing what is expedient rather than what is right.
Expediency has never been – nor will it ever be – a substitute for righteousness. We must recognize right as right and do it.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 