Crossing Against the Light

The other day I was standing at a street corner waiting for the "Walk" sign to light. In front of me was an apparently loving grandmother with a little 4 or 5-year-old girl. It was a cute picture, the grandma using the teachable moments to get the little girl to count or to learn something new by watching things that were around. The left turn light turned green, but the "Walk" didn't light, so I waited ... but the grandmother didn't. She grasped firmly the little girl's hand and walked into the street toward cars turning into her path. She waited in the middle of the street until they stopped and then went on.

"Big deal," most of you would say. "She kept the girl safe." Not my concern here. What else did she do? She taught this little girl another valuable lesson: Rules are made to be broken. She did it in the most innocuous way, making it more dangerous. She categorized the traffic safety laws as "less important" and taught her grandchild, "Don't consider laws as things to obey. Think of them as things to break when it suits you and you can get away with it."

I know ... much ado about nothing. Still, I can't help thinking that it's exactly what each of us does. I'm sure that this grandmother would never tell her dear granddaughter, "Why don't you go into that store and see if you can grab some candy without being caught!" No, no, stealing is bad. Crossing the street illegally is ... well ... not. And so we all seem to do. I knew a Christian woman who argued, "Christians shouldn't see R-rated movies!", but felt no compunction to submit to her husband. Conservative moralists will shout, "Homosexuality is immoral!" while they ignore the adultery they commit or the stealing they perpetrate. I bet there were plenty of heterosexual couples who live together without the benefit of marriage who voted on moral grounds to prevent "same-sex marriage". Too many who call themselves "Christians" beat their breasts against the immorality of this world while they mimic it. It is no wonder that it's tough to tell the Christians from the world. Still, it is a human thing. We all do it to a varying extent.

It is in the nature of human beings to minimize our own error. One of the smoothest ways to commit this sleight of hand is to maximize the errors of others. "Well, I never killed 6 million Jews like Hitler did. I'm not a bad person." Sorry. Wrong standard. The standard we are bound to keep makes crossing the street against the light equivalent to murder in terms of violating God's standards. Be careful when you start pointing fingers. I know I can't afford to do it much without considering my own sins first. You see, what they are doing is bad; what I am doing isn't so bad. They are committing big sins, but I'm just ... crossing against the light.