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The world that we live in is determined to mend us into these bitter creatures that rejoice when something bad happens to those that have done any wrong. Whether someone did wrong unto you, or whether they did wrong unto your neighbor, the fact that they did wrong at all doesn’t mean that they are permanently marred by their mistakes; it just means that they are human.
The essence of being human is mostly made up of mistakes. If you had to make a list of every little thing that makes up being human, making mistakes would easily top the list as the most prominent ingredient. Yet, it seems like when those around us are quick to make mistakes, we act as though our ingredient list—the things that make us, us—doesn’t have a single mistake on it.
As I was going through my Bible the other day, I reached the book of Obadiah. I feel like Obadiah is one of those books of the Bible that gets overlooked simply because of the fact that it’s only 3 pages long—if you’re being generous. But as I read through it, I realized that the story of Obadiah is a story that we can all relate to. It is a story of sticking up for what is right, but also remaining humble enough to not gloat in face of those that have been defeated. It shows us that even though things go right for us, we aren’t supposed to expect that we couldn’t fall for the same traps that our enemies fell into.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the story of Obadiah is a perfect summarization of what it means to be human. On one hand, you have the ‘bad’ guys that can’t possibly get away with their actions forever, yet they act as though they can and will; and then you also have the ‘good’ guys that are so easy to root for because there is always a seemingly insurmountable obstacle in their way. The truth is that at any given moment, we can be both ‘good’ and ‘bad.’
If you rejoice because of the suffering of your enemies, then you yourself turn into the very monster that you sought to destroy. The grey, often blurry line that lay in between good and bad is easily crossed. Guard your body, mind, heart, and soul with everything that you have. The good are not beaten by evil alone; they are mostly beaten by the lack of persistence in their quest to remain good.
You should not have gloated when they exiled your relatives to distant lands. You should not have rejoiced when the people of Judah suffered such misfortune. You should not have spoken arrogantly in that terrible time of trouble.
Obadiah 1:12 NLT