"He who says to the wicked, "You are righteous," peoples will curse him, nations will abhor him."
wicked
This is the Hebrew word resa, which means wrong, wicked, guilt. The idea is a person who lives consistently beyond the boundaries of the Ten Commandments.
Wickedness is selfishness that has been pushed to an extreme level where others are deliberately harmed to advance or pleasure oneself. We, in the West, are at the point where we violate this insight of wisdom. And we have the scorn of the rest of the world who is not under the immoral spell we are under.
We declare that it is not wrong, but is in fact "healthy," for a person to pursue their own sexual pleasure to the point of using and abusing the young, the innocent, animals, the inanimate, the same sex – anything as long as the person gets what they want. This is perversion.
We declare that it is not wrong, but is in fact "good," to pursue money and wealth to the point where we are willing to throw people out of work, deceive, bribe, corrupt, step on, use others to obtain more money or a higher rate of return.
We declare that it is not wrong, but is in fact psychologically healthy, to blaspheme, spew incredible anger, verbally abuse others, denigrate God and people in order to express what we happen to be feeling at a particular moment.
We declare that it is not wrong, but is in fact necessary, to rebel, disrespect, and ignore parents and authorities.
We declare that it is good and helpful to kill innocent babies in the womb and help people die at low moments of their life.
These and many other ways of thinking have become a significant part of Western Culture as it has moved away from its Judeo-Christian roots. We must face the fact that we have allowed large parts of our culture to become immoral.
The basic idea of wickedness is selfishness that harms others to promote itself. And the basic idea of righteousness is right relationship and benefit to those around us. Our culture of excess and selfishness is not willing to recognize that many of the things that it is approving do irreparable damage to families, individuals, communities, and children while allowing a person to express themselves.
It is these immoralities and wickedness that has the rest of the world abhorring the culture of excess of the West. I believe that we who live in the West -- even if we have not participated in any of these activities -- must confess that our culture has approved of these things and repent and weep before God because of them. We must not continue to pretend that other cultures have no reason to find us immoral. We allow abominable levels of immorality.
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz