If It Is Right

In Alan Paton’s famous South African novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, the character Arthur Jarvis was killed when three native young men entered his house to steal from him. The tragedy was that Arthur, a white man, was actually a champion of the black people who had been oppressed and mistreated by the whites there. He criticized the hypocrisy of white South Africans who claimed to be Christians and yet trampled on the rights of the blacks. The book records these words written by Arthur explaining his motivation and his work to help his country: “Therefore I shall devote myself, my time, my energy, my talents, to the service of South Africa. I shall no longer ask myself if this or that is expedient, but only if it is right. I shall do this, not because I am noble or unselfish, but because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie. I shall do this, not because I am… a hater of my own, but because I cannot find it in me to do anything else. I am lost when I balance this against that, I am lost when I ask if this is safe, I am lost when I ask if men, white men or black men, Englishmen or Afrikaners, Gentiles or Jews, will approve. Therefore I shall try to do what is right, and to speak what is true. I do this not because I am courageous and honest, but because it is the only way to end the conflict of my deepest soul. I do it because I am no longer able to aspire to the highest with one part of myself, and to deny it with another” (pg. 208). I love that affirmation of doing the right thing regardless of its expediency or the opinions of men or its consequences. As followers of the Savior this is in essence what He asks us to commit to: to follow Him and to strive to do His will no matter what the world thinks or how inconvenient it may be. In the Sermon on the Mount, the Savior put it this way: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). The words of Arthur Jarvis also reminded me of the Law of Consecration that the Lord invites us to live in the temple endowment: “Dedicating our time, talents, and everything with which the Lord has blessed us to building up Jesus Christ’s Church on the earth.” The Lord invites us to consecrate all that way have and are to doing what is right.

               In the scriptures one of the best examples of this attitude is the apostle Paul. He was totally committed to serving the Lord no matter what the cost was to himself. As he returned to Jerusalem at the end of three missions where he had already suffered enormously, he told the Saints from Ephesus this: “And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there: Save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:22-24). Even with the confirmation of the Spirit that great afflictions awaited him, he journeyed to Jerusalem because that was the right thing to do. When he got to Cæsarea, a man named Agabus “took Paul’s girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.” He prophesied that Paul would indeed be bound and put into prison at Jerusalem, and Luke recorded that after this prophecy “both we, and they of that place, besought him not to go up to Jerusalem.” But Paul was unflappable and responded, “What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:11-13). That is the kind of determination we need to have to follow the Savior, even when the world would tell us to do otherwise. The Lord wants us to “devote [ourselves], [our] time, [our] energy, [our] talents, to [His] service.” As we are faced with decisions our most important criteria should be, as it was for Jarvis, “if it is right.”