On Doing the "Right" Thing
The art of critical thinking— and the theological implications thereof
Dear friends,
It has been so long! I trust you are well. I am doing well in a new way; the last few months have been difficult for me on a personal level. I am working through grief and pain like never before, and I am learning, as I shared with someone recently, that grief and joy can indeed co-exist.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to “do,” to act, to move, in a way that is “right.”
I will always have this little girl tucked away inside of me who just wants to do the “right” thing. But along with her is this other older part of me that knows how exhausting it is to try to live out what the cacaphonous multitude of voices from outside of myself are incessantly screaming, shouting, and whispering— “This is the RIGHT THING! Do this.”
This older woman with life experience knows, too, how easily an earnestness to “do the right thing” can become a tool of oppression, one way or the other, for anyone who needs to feel powerful and in-control.
Then there’s what my religion tells me and tells me about what the “right” thing is. This, too, is a multitudinous and pluralistic message which, in the end, no matter how you shake it, comes down more to an individual people’s or communty’s perspectives than anything else because, well, because no one has a complete grasp on “ultimate truth,” though some may claim they do.
(And I think this is a good for all, because if any one person fully knew the complete and ultimate truth, wholly and in its entirety, in all of its interpretations and iterations, they would hold so much power they could claim god-hood, which is a chilling thought indeed.)
There’s this song which plays on repeat in my head, especially when I’m faced with decisions: “Do the right thing, do the right thing, do it all the time, make yourself right, never mind them, don’t you know you’re not the only one suffering?…"
Here, have a listen:
It expresses this thing, this personal truth, that’s become my life mantra, my inner conscience, that little guiding voice which whispers in my ear- myself, but not- telling me that “doing the right thing” for me is doing according to what I know to be right, nothing more, nothing less.
Yes, you heard me right, I think it’s up to each us humans to work out what doing the right thing means for ourselves (and why "doing the right thing" might look a little bit different for every single one of us).
If you’re a Christian like me, who doesn’t define yourself by your Christianity but rather by the idea that you are trying to work out what it means to walk in the way of Jesus (who you think of as also having been piecing together what it means to walk in the light of this Divine ultimate truth that no one can fully grasp but everyone can touch and tap into), then you’re always going to be testing your ideas about ‘right’ and ‘doing’ against questions like, “What is it to love our neighbors and ourselves like Jesus urged right now, today, in the present?” and “Do my most marginalized neighbors experience this doing right as love?” and also “Does my doing of right activate something life-giving on behalf of my most marginalized neighbors, cousins, and other planetary elements?”
To reiterate, here’s what I’ve been working on theologically and philosophically—
I’m pretty sure it's up to us humans to work out, to suss out, to ascertain, to muddle through what "doing the right thing" means in the middle of the muck and grind of everyday life as it applies to concrete, physical, right-here-and-now living— and hasn't this always been a matter of careful personal interpretation?
And I’m pretty sure that the most devastating damage is done by folks who fail to recognize that they are always already being worker-outers of “doing the right thing” whether they know it or not, and thus they might want to constantly be thinking about what ‘doing right’ means to them and others and why.
I’m also pretty sure that doing the right thing for me should look a lot like doing what contributes to the life of this planet for all of us, religious or not, because everything’s connected, right?
I’m pretty convinced, too, that staying open to discussing more and more robust and ever-expanding and multiplicated imaginings of 'life' and ‘that which is life-giving,’ especially from those who have been socially or environmentally silenced, human and not, is essential to anyone who’s recognizing that they ought to be their own agents of critical thinking.
So, especially in this current time we are living in, in this political climate in America, where some things which are antithetical to life are fomenting right here on the surface of our collective consciouscnesses, especially during this Holy Week for those who call ourselves Christians, as we contemplate this death that came to a falsely-condemned, criminalized, marginalized person, my little injunction to you and me, to us, is to lean into our own abilities to think critically and examine what we teach and say and think and believe and to do using a "do the ‘right’ thing” according to ‘me,’ using a for-what-or-whom-does-this-bring-life,-or-not?, ever-questioning, ever-deciding, ever-changing-and-growing, paradigm.
Peace, friends.
May you dwell in love.
-Carissa