The ways we define right and wrong.

September 14, 2025

So, I feel like we’ve landed in a really good position to consider how we, as individuals and a combination of cultures, determine what is right and wrong. Like, stop to actually parse out those details. What elements have we come to consider, and how are we framing it?

Recently a friend of mine talked about how morality has no absolutes. I’d like to share a story of how I came to examine that concept for myself in a way that changed everything for me.

In my mid- to late-30’s, I became aware that someone in my immediate circle not only had a real problem with me, but had made their feelings and litany of reasons known to a whole lot of people over a period of multiple years. When asked about where things had gone sideways, she reminded me of something I had said years before. It turns out that she had taken it very differently from the actual intention I had when I spoke. Ever since then, she had allowed that negative perspective of me to color everything I did. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by that, because I had witnessed her snarky remarks about others - often based on a story line that was fabricated from a distance, as if it was fact - and after seeking a way through the issue to better ground, I ended up cutting ties with her. While I was left with a whole mountain of misinformation that was still influencing the people around me, the real life-changing moment for me, personally, came a few months later when I found myself doing the very thing that she was so prone to do.

I observed a person wearing a clothing assortment that would be considered uncommon, and I turned to someone next to me and said something condescending about it - mostly utilizing the judgement as an attempt to entertain my buddies and have a laugh. Thankfully the person I spoke to seemed to find my comment distasteful, and their subtle expression was enough to check me. When I considered how I had just judged someone I did not know, based on something that does not matter at all, for the opportunity to connect with someone else in humor (or perhaps solidify their understanding of what I find acceptable) I was quite literally disgusted with myself.

That moment shifted the whole playing field for me. I couldn’t believe I had become like her. At first I thought about how contagious and addictive that mentality is - that I would have allowed the unfair judgement of another person to become an easy and accessible form of entertainment. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I had been raised in a version of that very thing, and had been conditioned to doing it my whole life - right there in the comfort of my upper-middle class, white privileged, conservative, Christian life. Suddenly I realized that I had some serious sorting out to do as far as where I was automatically judging others, and how I determined what was right and wrong in the first place. Spoiler alert - a whole lot of things came undone when I started pulling on that thread.

When I backed up to pay attention to how critical I was being of other people, it took very little time for me to recognize the element of personal preference or understanding that was woven into the situation. I judged the things that bothered me. I acted like they came from a place of right or wrong, but I kept catching on the detail that they were generally doing something that impacted what I felt I deserved, or made my own integrity more difficult to hold. Too often, the framework I was working with was that I didn’t like what they were doing … not that it was definitively wrong from every angle.

That’s where I had to stop and consider how I determined right from wrong across the board. Like, who actually gets their way? Y’all, most of us act like that’s a simple thing, but it’s a really sticky method of measurement. We want to state these things with certainty, but - as my friend said - it’s rarely (if ever) absolute, so there’s a lot of self-righteousness woven in there. We’re judging; just plain and simple. We diligently identify what people aren’t doing right, and what needs to be done about it. We justify that, because we honestly believe that the way we see it is the only right way. The thing is, we are only ever seeing it through our own lived experience. The parts of reality we are able to identify with what we currently know. The specific vantage point that comes with the culmination of every breath we’ve taken. Like it or not, that is different for every single person. It just is. Any notion that we share the exact same perspective as someone else creates exclusion and separation; when we are all children of God and form one body.

This pondering ended up being the threshold to my mid-life reckoning. I began picking apart the tapestry of my belief systems; largely, to identify what I was giving my energy to in moments when I really shouldn’t care. At each step I asked why I thought I was right to determine fault… and I followed each of those whys as far as I could to that belief’s roots. I began to realize that my life was built on all of it. It was dictating what ran my day, and what camped out in my brain at night. Understanding the extent of it became my primary focus and pursuit. It was my Eat, Pray, Love. It was my inner pilgrimage. It was my undoing. It went on for years. In many ways it will always be my ongoing plight. And here in 2025, this is what I know about morality, and how we judge right and wrong, and how power comes into play, and what I know about Jesus’ teachings that I imperfectly try to come back to as my ground zero on the topic.

It’s not that behavior doesn’t matter. It absolutely does, and what we choose to do and not do will always have some consequence - call that positive or negative… often measured differently by each person affected.

The important thing that I believe today is, we as individuals will honestly do the best we know how to do in any given moment. In that given moment we might not perform to our best overall potential, but if 20% is all we have available to us at that time - due to whatever the current circumstances are - then giving 20% is our best*. This is the humanity of things, and it is the medium that God’s grace works with. The basis of what Jesus taught was how that reality requires us to love each other unconditionally. That focusing on our own choice to do so is the task we are charged with, and it’s the only thing we have control over. The greatest impact we can have on another’s choices is to give them more of what they need, to help their best-selves become more available. Does that make sense?? And our own potential is easier to meet when we are not spending energy on the things we can’t control - that being the outcome, or what someone chooses to do in response.

While laws and rules can be helpful to determine mutually agreeable conditions as we live among each other (by raising our level of awareness in how we impact others), we spend an enormous amount of energy judging others and holding them accountable. The fact is, many of us were raised to believe that the things we consider okay, and not okay, are in fact the way to determine right from wrong. It’s led to dangerous, self-righteous standards, and a brazen claim on the right to judge others accordingly.

I tend to stand on the statement that the American Dream is not a biblical concept. However, Democracy itself is designed to curb our tendency to claim that our personal beliefs are the predetermined scale of God’s justice. What I have found is, when we honestly turn our attention to our own responsibility in daily life, it is extremely common to find a level of humility that rapidly increases our capacity for compassionate kindness toward one another. For, in reality, Jesus taught that we should leave the judgment solely up to God, to carry out in his own way and time, as is appropriate for each individual’s journey into faith. He is the only all-knowing one who can justify where we each sit in that trajectory.

So let’s talk about that concept for a minute. Where does our faith come into play with all of this? How do we justify and validate the concept that God is the ultimate power in our lives? And how do we operate from that stance without trying to dictate what other people do? It is true that we are human. It is true that we are sinful by nature. It is also true that we are all children of God and belong to the Kingdom of Heaven - inherently - and therefore have access to all of the help that Heaven has to offer; our every need being met. What I now utilize within that knowledge is that, we are spiritual beings having a human experience,** and that our spirit has full understanding of our identity and security as children of God. However, when we exist as matter in human form, in physical reality, we loose perspective - quite literally. We cannot see through most of what is; everything we do see is a mix of shadow and light; and in that human experience we loose our sense of self, and belonging! We actually forget that we are safe, and secure, and have what we need. Within that, the very natural human response is to learn to be fearful and identify what we can control; to assure that we are okay, that we have what we deserve, and that no one is holding power over us unfairly.

Whether we realize it or not, we are each on a journey back into remembering. A journey into faith in our identity. Remembering that God is in control in such a way that we don’t have to dictate anything other than our response to whatever the present moment is presenting. By telling us repeatedly not to fear, that we are children of God, that we are okay, that we are loved and cherished, etc, etc, etc, Jesus is saving us from ourselves and our forgetfulness. Because acting in forgetfulness of who and what we are is what sin is. Remembering means that we take responsibility for ourselves - regardless of who is influencing our very human feelings and perspective. In that way, we meet our reality as a child of God would, if they stood firmly in the promises of what that identity means.

According to Jesus, creating rules and laws that define one another is not how we do this. Pursuing so called justice in the name of accountability when a person performs within the limits of their reality is not bringing into balance the reality at play. Loving and honoring the Source of our security and acceptance (God), and loving the other in a way that indicates our understanding of their identity as children of God is our highest command.

In regard to this part of our human life, Dr. Brene Brown identifies how power is primarily yielded in two different ways. There is power over another, and power to or with another. I see that hinge-point landing on our ability to remember our security. The place where we choose to operate from fear, verses the moment we realize we have what we need - period. We don’t need to take anything away from anyone - not their belief, and not their ability to act in the way that they choose. After all, God himself is the very creator of free-will.

I believe that anything we do to assert power or control OVER another person is immoral. Sexual immorality, for example, is about taking away another’s right to determine and assert their sexual boundaries in the way that is best for them in any given moment. When any person takes control away from another person with physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual leverage it’s a sin. That includes financial leverage, denial of status or belonging, and any other manipulative thoughts or action.

We are one body & also individually autonomous. To love your neighbor as yourself is to honor that truth in any way that you can. That is why 1 John 4:18 says that love is not yet perfect in one who is afraid. For to “need” to take anything from another, is to act from that place of forgetting that you will be given all that you need. When you seek greater understanding of what it means to be a child of the Kingdom of God - the experience of ultimate peace, and acceptance, and compassion, and strength, and an ever expanding understanding of what God’s love and grace can be - your path will be cleared and you will lack nothing - even in death. Those are not the things we are asking for when we turn our attention to what we could do to get what we want, or take what we think we need, or to put someone in their place as we deem appropriate. The miracles of God’s love are not what we seek when we are determined to keep score and collect restitution.

The gate into the peace that surpasses all understanding is our decision that we are safe because of what we are. Not that we are Baptist, Catholic, Jew, or Muslim; not that we perform well enough or have control over those who don’t; but because we are accepted and valued right where we’re at - in a way that opens up space for being a greater expression of the peace that comes with that knowing. That’s what I think about when I read Matthew 10:12-14 “Greet a household when you enter it, and if the household is worthy, let your peace be on it; but if is unworthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone does not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave…” It is our personal responsibility to remember who we are, and not allow someone else to convince us otherwise - giving them power over us. Because we are the same “enough” as they are; not less or more.

To circle back to the story I told at the beginning, I want to touch on the impact that our judgement can have on each other. Also how often we are doing so without considering what we have misunderstood or have no way of knowing fully. It is incredibly common for us to miss the degree of impact we have on others when we judge them. Those moments don’t just have lasting effects for that person, they ripple out and are amplified. The way we express our truth is how we live out our purpose as reflections of our maker. We are designed to make an impression!! We may refuse to recognize it, or we might justify it until we’re blue in the face, but the truth is, our command to love each other means that we let go of the right and wrong and just accept one another in every way we can find to do so.

The absolute of morality is that we are not in a position to judge one another and therefore should not; which determines that all the ways we try to control or seek power over another person is sinful. We are called to work with what we have collectively, in a spirit of generosity and kindness. In believing that fully, we are able to accept where we each are - in love. We step into faith that that love is enough to balance out where there is lack, so that we can each find ourselves able to be the “more” that is our potential among each other. After all, we’re all sheep and we’re all saved, we just have to become living reminders of that truth.

I do want to reiterate that sometimes taking responsibility for ourselves looks like removing ourselves from that which cannot receive our peace. Forcing another to acknowledge where we are at is a way of controlling. In these moments you can love another by accepting where they are in their own journey of remembering that they are safe. Loving yourself means holding your own power in a way that protects your belief that you are secure as a child of God regardless of how the world around you operates. I sincerely believe that these things are reflected in the discipline that Jesus taught leading up to his death. I hold hope that the truths he expressed in the way he walked among us will be the truths that continue to save us from our forgetfulness time and time again.

Every single person holds the identity of child of God. We are saved - each and every one. We are simply here to live as an expression of that so that we spark greater recognition wherever it is forgotten. We are always in a place to return to that, alone. It is never an automatic function, and the diligence it takes is very real… but as I stated before, we’ve developed that diligence already in how we are consistently looking at the other as the issue. We have to learn to recenter it on what we can individually control within ourselves. For that is where the tide of God’s perfect justice and goodness will move out to shift the balance of all that is. God is good, all the time. May we choose to remember it more with every breath we take, and change the way we see each other - forever.

Striving to remember,

Em

* I originally heard this as a conversation between Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

** Maybe originally said by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - I heard it from Eckhart Tolle.