Fighting Wrong with Wrong

Recently an incident occurred that left my ears stinging and my heart saddened. A stranger speaking to someone I was sitting beside began talking about the morals in other places compared to where we were at. Then suddenly he used extremely rude, offensive, hurtful slang to describe those persons whom he encountered elsewhere. I have heard terms like that used before, but never have I had such a hard time with hearing it as I did just then. May be it effected me the way it did because I saw it for what it was - HATE. Hate for another human being; a fellow child of God. I'm not sure if I handled the situation as best I could, but given I had my little one in tow, I quickly got up and left that area until the individual was gone.

My mind has spun since then about past experiences I have witnessed or heard about in headlines regarding individuals originally attempting to fight for what was RIGHT, but diving into WRONG in a much failed attempt to do so. There are too many examples of this in today's world. (Comment sections especially have gotten WAY out of hand.)

It's like there are two teams with a line drawn down the middle dividing them. Team Right and Team Wrong. Instead of staying on the Right side of the line as Wrong runs their play, you lash out at them lunging yourself to their side to "teach them a lesson," but little do you know, you crossed the line and joined their team... Ooops!

When someone makes fun of us or someone else, degrading and bullying them, do we really think calling them horrible names, and swearing at them is really going to fix the problem? NO!!! It obviously just fuels the HATE fire. A fight has now broken loose, instead of the opportunity to change someone's wrongful behaviour. I know personally from way back when(I'm talking below grade 4. Bully = me), whenever I would purposely hurt someone and they did it right back to me, it made me want to continue on being hurtful to them. However, when it was called out to me in a calm way that that was a very mean thing I had done and that it hurt them, the immediate remorse over my actions consumed me and I became ever-so sorry and desired desperately to change. Bullying someone back never works, but calling them out in an honest way does. You have to teach people how to treat you. It really comes down to this simple and wonderfully put quote:

"Defend your beliefs with courtesy 

and with compassion, but defend them."

- Jeffrey R. Holland                                        

the-cost-and-blessings-of-discipleship

I've really thought about it and I think I can see where we as individuals error - we don't listen. When faced with a difficult situation where something wrong is being done, instead of quieting ourselves and listening for that still small voice to guide us in our words and actions, we give into our inward screaming's of selfish pride and fear. We completely bypass our Heavenly Father (the lawmaker of right and wrong) in His infinite wisdom and guidance; therefore deciding to take matters into our own imperfect hands. ***We kick out our only true and sturdy leg that we had to stand on.***

We need to fight what's wrong in the world, we do, that's how changes for good can be brought about. BUT, we need to caution ourselves in knowing what the RIGHT thing to do is before we jump the gun in a riotous rage, because when we do so, unfortunately we just joined the wrong team.



Heaven's slice is actually fighting for what's RIGHT.