At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death”
Proverbs 16:25
No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Well, I must make sure to ruin my life today.” And yet, there are multiple mornings where people do get up and have breakfast, all to give them the strength to . . . ruin their life that day.
We are rationalizing creatures, which means that when we are hellbent on doing wrong, we have the capacity to explain to ourselves how the whole thing “seems right.” And there are a range of options here. We might convince ourselves that what we want to do is genuinely right when in fact it is really foolish. Or we might acknowledge that it is “technically” wrong, but how can it be wrong when it feels so right.
In short, the way of disaster is a lot more pleasant at the beginning than it is at the end. Scripture teaches us to evaluate the beginning by the end, and not to evaluate the beginning by the sensations we are experiencing at the beginning. Because we are not there at the end, because the end is not yet upon us, we have to rely on God’s Word to inform us of the nature of that end.
God is not mocked. You reap what you sow, and there is a straight line connection between what you sow and what you reap. But the crop looks very different than the sack of seed does. The sack of seed had “seems right” emblazoned on the side, and the crop was nothing but death and ruination.
So when we sow, we must do so in faith. Because we see only the seed, and not the harvest, we must make a point of listening to God’s description of the seed. We must live carefully, and need much more assurance than “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
