Corruption is easy and goodness is hard

What does it take to be good?

Why is there so much corruption, lies, deception, jealousy, cheating—you name it?

I think the reason why is that our culture, from presidents and kings to paupers and bums, has been corrupted, intentionally. Why? Because when a culture is corrupt, people in that culture are easy to deceive and manipulate. The people can be encouraged to go along with evil and think it's justified, even that doing evil is good and right.

Ignorance of Righteousness: the Math of Goodness

Doing what's right and good, being trustworthy, is as clear as math—2 + 2 = 4—but can we know 2 + 2 = 4 without knowledge of mathematics? If our culture doesn’t teach us how to be good, what the standard is, we can be deceived and tricked into corruption.

How many politicians are tricked into becoming instruments of evil when their political careers often started with dreams of being good?

Being good requires literacy in goodness. Our culture, through scripture, fables, and childhood stories shows us why lying to our fellows is bad and honesty is good. Without goodness literacy, we can be deceived by the scribes and pharisees of the modern age.

Without knowing what goodness is, how to identify it, and how to embody it there's no way to guard ourselves against the temptations of cultural greed, malice, cheating, arrogance, lies, and unjust enrichment. Everyone else is doing it to get ahead, why not us?

Without being taught how to be good and what trustworthiness is we can be made to believe that wars are good, that abortion is good, that taking drugs are good, that cheating our friends and family is OK if justified—even that evil isn't bad and God isn't good.

The Narrow Path

It's easy to see that doing the right thing is a narrow path, a choice, that requires effort, courage, selflessness, discipline, and dedication.

Devotion to our families, friends, and children is a narrow path because how many lies does it take to hurt others and destroy relationships?

How much theft does it take to destroy trust?

Avoiding greed and unjust enrichment requires honesty and transparency, a commitment to our fellows to make us accountable. This is a narrow path.

Not abusing power in office or as the head of a business requires accountability, to your partners, employees, and customers. It requires courage, faith, and the sacrificing of greedy ambitions. This is a narrow path.

On either side of the narrow path, the path of goodness, righteousness, of faith in God and family, there are oceans of ever deepening corruption and evil. It's all to easy to slip into these gullies along the narrow road of truth, justice, and goodness. Before we know it, we've fallen off that narrow path, hurting ourselves, our communities and our nation.

When a culture is whitewashed with false trust and shallow goodness, there are no examples left to teach and guide. Within a few short generations, the culture has quietly shifted so that it encourages and even justifies corruption to get ahead.

Is this not an accurate description of the modern world?

Courage and Redemption

With courage, we can face the corruption in front of us and in our own lives to make things right.

One of the greatest gifts of life is that courage to do the right thing can undo a life time's worth of corruption with a few acts of confession and repentance, to ourselves and our maker, to our friends and family, and to our communities and nation. The reward is a better life, better relationships and better world.

A few men or women can shine brightly in a corrupt world, just as our founding fathers of the United States did when they fought the evils of their day.

There were only 3% of the then colonialists who did what they could to free the colonies from the corruption of King George. Their courage changed things forever.