Nobody's Watching - that's what he thought

My dad, along with countless other wise parents, said, “Son, character is what you do when you think no one is watching.” And then, being a preacher, my dad would finish with, “But God is always watching.”

So that’s it then. Character can be good or bad based on your decision to act or not and it’s all between you and God. The Bible says God is a just and jealous God, but he is also forgiving, not wanting anyone to go to hell. So a loose character is forgivable, right, if God is the only one watching?

But we’re 31 days away from 2018. God is never the only one watching. Someone somewhere with a cellphone camera and nothing to do but watch for the perfect selfie or the next injustice stands at the ready to record it all, upload it to the web for eternal playback, and take credit for capturing the next shiny object.

Wait a minute, you say. “Mark, you said you were shifting your tone to be more about love,” you say.

You’re right.

My dad was mostly right. Character is about what you do when no one is watching. But it’s also more than that. It’s about what you do when you don’t care who is watching. It’s about what you do when faced with a moral dilemma that has no good answer, or two slightly bad answers. It’s about what you do when law and right are at conflict.

Several regional papers ran a story mid-summer about a Laurel, MD, officer who responded to the call for a shoplifter at the local Giant grocery. When he arrived he found a young mother had been caught attempting to steal diapers for her child. The diapers, $15 worth, landed the mother a misdemeanor charge – that’s the law fairly doled – but landed the officer in a conundrum. So, being of strong character, he paid for the diapers out of his own pocket and sent the mother on her way.

The officer was faced with a conflict between what was the law and what was right, and he obeyed both. You see, conflicts don’t always end with one side being right and one being wrong. Sometimes, like in the diapers case, there are two right answers and it takes willingness to sacrifice to see it. The officer could have cited the mother for attempted theft and told her to get a job or find a way to pay for the diapers legally, but that’s not what he did.

And that’s not what Jesus did, either.

When faced with the challenge of the prostitute’s guilt, Jesus didn’t discount her crimes against man or God, but He didn’t throw the book at her either. He said, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. “ (John 8:7, NIV) You see the law and punishment for adultery in that instance was death by stoning. Jesus didn’t deny the law, He simply required equal judgment for equal sin and when no one remained, He commanded the woman to take advantage of His goodness and sin no more. (v. 11)

So, as much as character is what we do when nobody is looking, our character in Christ is what we do when everyone is looking and the answer is hard. Like the Laurel officer who found both the law and right, my challenge today is to find the right answer even when it embodies conflict.

“And sin no more.”

Hmm…

(Photo courtesy of John Dixon)