The Pulpit Speaks: February 27, 1960

An article written by my father, the Rev. C. Thomas Paige, as it appeared in the Tri-State Defender on the date shown.

Then said the Lord, “I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people, Israel.” – Amos 7:8

Never in the history of men has there been so much controversy concerning right and wrong. Many people try to interpret the idea that good and bad – right and wrong – are things determined by society. Many of us go along with such thinking. What is good or bad, right or wrong, to many of us is a matter of what society says about it. This may be ever so right on surface thinking but in life’s saner moments, we look at it altogether differently.

What is right or wrong, good or bad, rests not with society but with a higher authority uncolored by human appetites and the like. Right and good, bad and wrong are not the unstable things we would like for them to be; rather, they are those stable elements among us that will eventually challenge the very soul of man and eventually determine his best behavior. In the final analysis, life becomes meaningful only to the proportion that all are concerned with the highest in the terms of the highest, and not society.

As much as we would like to think in terms of society determining the good and bad elements of our society, it just does not work like that. What is good or bad does not rest with us – it rests with a higher authority. When God told Amos, “I have set before thee a plumbline,” He was saying in so many words, “I am setting before thee a way of life” – or should we say THE way of life. God’s peculiar position enables Him to be a far better judge than any of us. His stability enables Him to have a sense of values far superior to any we might have.

The ever changing ambitions and desires on the part of man would put a sense of good and bad in a precarious position. The constant changing of moral values so evident in our society is quite evident of what would happen if the whole question of right and wrong were left in the hands of people. But a long time ago, as God spoke to man, He laid down the facts which would determine the standards by which man would be judged. The ever changing sense of values as evidenced by man will not be the standard of judgment. It will be those laid down by God.

Far removed from our standard of human behavior is a standard as laid down by God. The plumbline mentioned in our verse today tells the basis for real judging on the part of individual behavior is not a matter of society’s but a matter of God’s judgment. Whatever may be our definition of good must meet the approval of God.

Goodness and badness are things determined by God. Far removed from human interpretation of the same stands a judge who will impartially judge each of us. Life is so geared that each of us must stand up and hold to that which is noble and right.

A long time ago, one of the old prophets noted, “Righteousness exalts a nation!” This righteousness was laid down by God, the same that was laid down centuries ago and the standard by which each of us will be judged. The plumbline of righteousness will be the sole standard of judgment as long as there is a man upon the earth.

The very force at work in each of us today is that sense of goodness and righteousness as laid down by God. Foremost in each of our lives should be an adherence to the will of God. Those of us who, day by day, live by the will of God will finally live within the range of the fuller and finer life as laid down by God. This and only this will enable us to rise up against the reality of life designed according to the will of God.

View the entire archive of “The Pulpit Speaks” here.