Skip to main content

Thoughts on “Don’t Get Caught”

We live in a world and society that believes if you do not get caught, you did nothing wrong. Right and wrong are defined by the law, not the Bible and if you can avoid getting caught by the enforcers of the law, you did nothing wrong. Avoid law enforcement past the statute of limitations and you are scot free for the rest of your life. One aspect of the privacy fight is that people are afraid of being caught. Those who welcome the government’s spying eye will say that they have nothing to hide. This is a fallacy because laws change, regularly and what is legal today will be illegal tomorrow and they will get caught.

Most people have some sort of internal compass telling them what is right and wrong. Some may call this their conscience. This is trained in the home during upbringing with norms from society. Back in the day, men were called ‘sir’ and ladies were called ‘ma’am.’ This was considered correct behavior. Today we call it outdates victorian norms.  Times change.

And yet, when people do things that violate their conscience, they will have a bad feeling and might be a tad paranoid knowing that someone is watching and that some nasty consequences are coming. After a while, they will notice that there are no consequences and they try rude, unacceptable behavior again and again and notice that they still have some friends and they are still employed and life goes on. At this point a portion of their conscience gets seared and replaced with learned behavior. If people notice the rude behavior and react, the perpetrator will learn to hide that behavior or only act that way around accepting people. People will learn to not get caught.  If you are in politics, and get caught, just claim "full responsibility" for whatever it was, and all will be ignored.

As time goes on, societies like ours will get more secretive. Not knowing who will approve of our thoughts and behavior we keep our circle of friends small. Like Germany under Hitler, Cuba under Castro and Russia under Stalin people say to themselves, quiet and at home because they don't know who is working for the government. Public behavior becomes that behavior which is mandated by the state. We are not there yet, in America, but people are realizing that anything they say or do or write can end up on Facebook and twitter and the evening news. As the government looks to create a utopia by preventing crime, more and more of what people say and think will be examined. So people share and hide and hope that they don’t get caught.

People who claim to see the writing on the wall about government intrusion will get off the grid, pay cash for everything and plan to bug out when it all falls apart. It is difficult to live totally off the grid, especially in the Bay Area, but moving out of civilization is a way to do it. The belief for people like this, and I met many of these types in Alaska, is that they can do anything with no consequences because no one sees them and no one knows what they did.

For the rest of us, we try and keep our noses clean, stay out of the limelight and don’t do anything really bad. That way we will not get caught by the government. However there is final judgement from a judge that has seen and recorded everything. At the end of time, God will dole out the consequences for every sin that was perpetrated. There will be no escaping that final judgement and all who feel they have made it on this earth will certainly, on that final day, get caught.


#Thoughts on getting caught#

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Stressed by email?

Cornerstone Fellowship *Farewell Sermon* 6-4-23 Rev. Michael L. Wilson

Thoughts on Dinosaurs

There is a commercial on TV where there is a flying lizard and a larger flying lizard comes along side.  This is advertising some dinosaur exhibit at some learning center of museum in Northern California.  When we see animations like this, some may think that this is actually what ancient reptile beasts looked like.  When we think of dinosaurs, we need to understand a few things. We have no idea what dinosaurs looked like.  We have no idea what any of them sounded like.  We don’t know what color they were or what texture their skin was (mostly). We have no idea what they ate.   We have no idea if they were friendly and docile or violent and full of rage. We have no idea how they walked, how fast they walked or if any of them flew. We have no idea why we don’t have any dinosaurs on earth anymore. This is because we have never found a dinosaur.  In fact we have only found the spaces where their bones were.  When a dinosaur died, it may have gotten buried.  All the skin and mus