Worthy Conduct

If you don't think people are creative, just confront them with their poor conduct and listen to the excuses they come up with for bad behavior.  Somehow or another, regardless of how inexcusable their behavior actually is, they reason why it was perfectly understandable given their circumstances, background or general predisposition.

Perhaps the most common is the "my dog ate my homework" excuse.  Whatever it is that I have done or failed to do can be laid at the feet of someone else.  Men who beat their wives often deflect their guilt saying, "You made me do it!"  Their bad behavior is deflected to the recipient of their wrath.  Employees who are chronically late to work will blame the traffic, the kids, a lost shoe, or nearly anything or one except the fact that they get up or start getting ready to late.

Many lay the blame on their upbringing, their parents, their siblings, their teachers, their culture, their backwoods roots, their big city roots, their whatever that molded or conditioned their attitude, rudeness, roughness, intolerance, whatever that has resulted in unacceptable behavior.  Whatever it was in their past to make them this way, it wasn't their fault and they can't change it.

Of course, their is the old standby, "That's just the way I am," usually followed with something like, "if you love me, you'll accept me, the way I am."  They don't bother with the how their bad behavior came to be, it just is.  Theirs is a fatalistic view of their conduct and your being stuck with accepting it.  

But then there is the biblical view, which is not at all like the ones offered above.  In fact, it lays them open and bleeding with personal failure to own and direct your attitudes and behaviors rather than excuse them: "Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ" (Phil 1:27).  

Simple, isn't it?  Regardless of what precipitates your attitude or what pressures are brought to bear on your behavior, own it in Christ and bring it under the rule of the Gospel: "Do everything in love" (1 Cor 16:14).  Jus' Sayn.