Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Knowingly doing something wrong

There have been a handful of times when I've run into somebody who could not wrap their head around the idea that somebody would do something wrong if they knew it was wrong. Two of them thought it was impossible. Just as they could not wrap their heads around such a thing, I could not wrap my head around how they could think such a thing. It seemed obvious to me that people can knowingly do what is wrong. I've done things I knew were wrong. Who hasn't? I remember talking to somebody about this a couple of years ago, and both of us were dumbfounded at each other. It made me wonder if there was some big misundertsanding going on. How could he be unaware of something that was so obvious to me? Or how could I be unaware of something that was so obvious to him?

Anywho, I was just watching This Crime Watch Daily video on YouTube about a murder for hire plot. There was one part of it that caught my attention. The woman who was hiring an undercover cop to kill her husband said, "This is such a horrible thing to do," and yet there she was doing it. Clearly, she was doing something wrong, and she knew it was wrong.

If you are reasding this, and you are one of those people who doesn't think a person can knowingly do something they think is wrong, can you explain this to me? I feel like there's something I'm missing. Nevermind the fact that I disagree with it. I wonder if I've just got some kind of misunderstanding about what people mean when they say they hold this position because it seems so obviously and demonstrably false to me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I seem to remember thinking this way when I was younger and rather sheltered. I was prevented from making a lot of traditionally bad choices for lack of opportunity. My obedience came from a place of fear. I struggled to understand how people could choose to do bad things. Doesn't fear prevent you, like it does for me? Aren't you afraid of getting in trouble? I now recognize that I was making personal justifications for my own sinful choices; rationalizing my sin as being less than, or not quite sin. Being "good," according to what most people in my life would define as good, and being proud of that status, led to arrogance and a real lack of understanding of my inherent sinful nature that separates me from God.