Why should we do the right things?

If there were an effective way to prevent the consequences of every excessive behavior known to mankind, could it make us better people? If you could take a pill that kept cookies from turning to body fat or if you could avoid all the painful consequences of drunkenness, would it change your habits? Is the possibility that lying or rage could shorten your life motivating to you in a way that other negative aspects of those behaviors are not? You may consider these questions rhetorical but many in our society do not consider the answers obvious.

One back-to-school article I read decried a clothing store that marketed shirts mocking drunkenness to kids who cannot legally drink. The reasons the journalist cited for the outrage surrounding this campaign had to do with consequences of drunkenness, increased unprotected sex and drunk driving specifically.

A second article was by a father who hopes, but doesn’t expect, his college freshman will avoid the hard-drinking initiation bashes he believes will pervade the campus to which he has delivered the child. He notes his own youthful excesses in a kind of moral shrug.

I read another article that asserted that lying is harmful to your health. Lying, our credentialed researchers concluded, takes a lot of work and damages relationships. Damaged relationships and the mental stress required to maintain a lie have negative consequences for our mental and physical health. Therefore we shouldn’t do it.

Of course, we know that all kinds of physical risks accompany sexual misconduct. What’s less sure to mature people is that a cure, contraceptive, or cover up will actually make us whole again. But I do think that is the story we’re told endlessly by our cultural spokesmen.

This might work if we are only bodies—a collection of electrochemical stuff that pointlessly cooperates to provide breath and sensation to the whole person. Not even the spiritually dead believe that, though. Thus, we talk about fulfillment, happiness, satisfaction, guilt, love, hope, desire, and all sorts of things not explainable if we are merely physical. What they miss is that if we possess consciousness, keeping the body healthy is not the whole job. Even if the belief is unspoken, we trust that these products of our minds each have an actual object, a focus not imagined. Those who would sell us things or lead us believe this also.

Don’t understand me to be scoffing at somatic idiot lights warning us that we have abused our flesh. Sin has a wear and tear that the Bible refers to often. The literal scars left by sin are reminders of pain that the wise will not wish to repeat. But these scars and regrets are embodiments of the more persistent spiritual toll willful sin takes on any life it touches. First Corinthians 6:16 seems to indicate that sexual immorality cannot be covered by a dose of penicillin or an abortion, even a contraceptive won’t suffice. Read the anguished words of Psalm 51 and then tell me that the ravages of sin are merely external.

How spiritually numb must we be to clothe our 13-year-old daughter in an overpriced t-shirt that announces that she is a member of USA Drinking Team—even if she never actually takes a drink? Drunkenness is only funny if you believe that the way we spend our brief days is of no importance. Is that what you want even your teetotaler kids to understand from the wardrobe you purchase for them?
Paul says that physical exercise is of little importance. He didn’t say “no” importance and he never praises sensual excess. But our motivation to do right is pretty pale if virtue is only in service of a somewhat longer life. In such thinking there is little purpose for those extended years.

What if, as in the case of many Christian martyrs, telling the truth actually shortens your life? Somewhere the Bible tells a story of three young men who found their rejection of idolatry to be risky behavior—the offended king tried to burn them alive. This would seem to argue in favor of lying in word or deed, if the point is to be the last and most beautiful man standing. We were made for more than that. The fact is that most of us will go into eternity with broken bodies, cranky knees, dim eyes, artificial joints, and wrinkled faces. How much worse it will be for those who put all their eggs into the prolonged youth and health basket, because they will every one of them fail miserably.

A casual attitude toward sin will betray us in the worst ways. The reasons we reject immorality, riotous living, and lies must be as eternal as the God who made us unfit for these vices. The reason I counsel(ed) my kids to do right was not entirely based on my desire for them to outlive me in prosperous earthly glory. I was highly motivated by the desire that they surpass me in righteousness, the pursuit of God’s approval. By faith I believe that this is the path of joy that will surely outlast this faithless flesh.