randolphrichards

Is it possible to do that right thing for the wrong reason? Yep. We can do right wrong. Jesus noted this problem. The Pharisees fasted and tithed. Jesus said those were right things to do, but the Pharisees were doing them for the wrong reason (Matt. 6:16-18). As followers of Jesus, we need to do the right thing and we need to do it for the right reasons. When I was a kid growing up in a Baptist church in Texas, our pastor would tell us not to read our horoscope in the local paper. When we asked, “Why?,” he replied, “Horoscopes don’t work.” He was correct that Christians shouldn’t read horoscopes. But he was wrong about why. Astrology is forbidden in the Bible. We are to look to the Creator of the stars, not to the stars, to know our future. 

What’s the problem, as long as we are doing the right thing? Instead of “Don’t read horoscopes, they are forbidden,” we were told, “Don’t read horoscopes, they don’t work.” What happens if I decide that for me, horoscopes do work? Scripture never says that astrology doesn’t work; it says it is forbidden. Soothsayers and augurs are among those God denounces in Deuteronomy 18. God includes astrologers among those he ridicules in Isaiah 47 and Jeremiah 10. 

We can do the right thing but for the wrong reason. Let’s bring it to a contemporary event. Christians are told to live like the Lord could return tomorrow. We are doing right if we are talking about the Lord’s return. But we are doing it for the wrong reason if we expect the Lord’s return because of some astral phenomenon. Reading signs in a blood moon is astrology. If we were expecting the Lord’s return because of the blood moon, we were doing right wrong.