For the longest time I believed that right and wrong was determined by religion, and while my moral compass is guided by my belief in God, recently I have realized that not everyone’s definition of right and wrong is dictated by what God they believe in, if they believe in one. For Christians, it is nearly impossible to believe that right exists outside of God, or that justice can exist in the absence of God, however, many times we see this phenomena of good defeating evil without the seemingly overwhelming presence of God.

If you are a Christian then you believe in the fact that God is omnipresent and omnipotent, meaning he is everywhere and he is all powerful. Through this belief it simply doesn’t make sense that right can exist without God, yet to the agnostic right exists daily without God, and good prevails evil without divine intervention. Does an agnostics belief that there isn’t a God remove God from right versus wrong?

Take a child for instance, when we are young we see only what is right in front of us. And while many times things are happening and going on around us, we only see what is put directly in front of us. We don’t see the food being bought, we just see the food on the table. We don’t see the toys being made, we just see them on the floor. In the case of a child it makes sense that seeing is believing, but in the case of right and wrong, good versus evil, God versus no god, just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

Recently I have struggled with right and wrong, not what they are, but more so the consequences of my actions versus the benefits of my decisions. In nearly every case the right decision is the hardest one to make, however, it is the one that will most always pay off in the long run. The problem lies in our lack of patience as human beings, in our insistence on instant gratification, and our desire to get what we want when we want it. Essentially I’ve been weak in that I have been substituting long term joy for short term happiness. I’ve been opting for the easy route over the hard route because I’ve lacked the faith and mental resilience to choose the right thing over the easy thing.

Ultimately the decisions that we make have the ability to affect everyone in our lives from our friends and family members to random people that we pass on the street. We don’t have control over what is right and what is wrong. All we have control over is what we do, and whether we believe in God or not, each one of us has been given an inherent moral compass that I believe is given by God. However, just because one doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t mean that he isn’t real. The right decision is hard because it is the decision that requires us to be strong, unselfish, and resolved, and asks that we make sacrifices. The wrong decision is easy because it gives us the ability to become our own god and live a life with no regard for the consequences that our actions have on us in the long run and on others. When it comes to decision making to set yourself apart from someone else you just have to remember one saying, “if it were easy anyone would do it.”

The right thing is meant to challenge us. It is meant to make us better human beings, and the only way to be a better person is to work at it. It isn’t hard because it’s complicated, it isn’t hard because it’s stressful. The right thing is hard because it demands that we step up and hold ourselves to a standard, that we don’t allow ourselves to be controlled by the things around us, and that as Christians we are in the world but not of the world.