When I was learning how to drive a car, the instructor didn’t just teach me what was in the driver’s manual. He taught me other tips too.

One of those tips was to go “with the speed of traffic.”

‘When you’re driving on the highway,’ he explained, ‘and everyone is going a bit faster than they should be, it can—within reason—be safer to just “go with the flow” instead of driving the actual speed limit.’

I think that’s the approach many of us take when it comes to morality as well, to deciding the difference between right and wrong. Instead of consulting what God thinks, we can just cruise along “with the speed of traffic”—simply because that’s what everyone else is doing.

But a leader in ancient Christianity named Augustine offered a clear corrective that still resonates today: “Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it. Right is right even if no one is doing it.”

I like that. Right and wrong flow from the all-knowing and all-wise heart of God, not the latest opinion polls.

I don’t want to come across as a stick-in-the-mud. In fact, I struggle with this too. The momentum of our society can be so strong that blending in is simply the path of least resistance.

But as God’s people, we need to seek his will first. As it says in Isaiah 5:20 (NIV), “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness…”

Are you in the process of making a big decision?
Are you wondering if your life is headed in the right direction?
Does anyone ever ask you to give some guidance or advice?

If so, seek God’s eternal teaching, not our society’s temporary trends.

“Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it. Right is right even if no one is doing it.”

By Matthew Ruttan

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