Seek and Do

Righteousness is a hard word for me. Do you have words like that? Words that you just cannot quite grasp, no matter how many different ways you try to look at them? I suspect, for me, it is because righteousness is a serious word, a final-judgment–sounding word.

                                                                                                                                                     Bonnie McClure

Do you know any righteous people? Yes is probably the answer but counting them may not reach past your index finger. These people are the ones who have the knack for doing the right thing at the wrong time without thought to consequence. Most of the time they do it silently, hidden from sight with no fanfare, then go about their business.

Of course, we were all taught to do the right thing, and this at one time meant something common and understood by all. Now, this means something else, something pertaining to an opinion by the person uttering it, an opinion based in their own worldview, and there are many—worldviews and opinions.

Of course, granted we may know many self-righteous people. I saw one in the mirror this morning.

Well, yes, the word is difficult, hard really, a convicting word, something unattainable if we think the word means a thing we are or to become, a name by which we may be called. “Hey, there goes Righteous. What a guy!”

Or, a more daunting thought, the word is attainable, earned, purchased, possessed like a coin or a truck. “Hey, did I show you my Righteous? I keep it in my garage. It’s a nice candy apple red.”

Likened to another way of thinking, righteousness becomes a destination, a place we wish to visit and spend a summer vacation or a mountain town where we want to retire and live and do the things we always wanted to do but didn’t have time for or made time. “Hey, I’m moving to Mount Righteous.”

If the word seems like a stumbling block on your faith journey, the Western, English meaning of the word contributes something to the mystery. In the end, faith demands we face the word, take hold of the intent if not the accepted definition as a reason to avoid such a thought.

A few steppingstones along our path may help. The Hebrew word for righteousness is tzedek. A noun, the word means not simply righteousness but also justice, the way things should be, used not to describe man or his view of the way things should be, but God, His name, His character. Righteousness is who God is, what He is like, what he does. Here lies the clue.

We cannot be God, cannot become God or put Him in our pocket. But because we are made in His image, we are able to see God, not with our eyes, for no man has ever seen God but with his soul, to have known something of God, His will, what delights Him. This we can do, yes, do what delights Him. Righteousness, then, becomes doing.

First, seek God.