I heard from a young teacher last semester. It was the first day that one of her elementary students began testing the rules, and she was scrambling to know how to handle the situation.

The school year was new, and the students were used to harmony in their class. Now, her method of classroom control was being tested. The other students stared and wondered, as they watched their peer blatantly disobey again and again. They watched the showdown between the brazen student and the young teacher who was attempting to enforce the rules. The rules that everyone had known. The rules that THEY needed so that learning could take place.

Then an amazing thing happened. The class had sympathy. But not for the teacher. No, their sympathy was directed toward the rulebreaker who had suffered consequences.

Isn’t that human nature?

I think about the story of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram with the 250 princes who rose up against Moses in Numbers 16. This is the Moses who God had anointed to lead His people out of bondage. Moses the deliverer!

But these Levites, princes, and people forgot that. They got their eyes on the list of things that upset them about Moses. He thought he was better than they were. He hadn’t led them to a land with milk and honey. Somehow in the middle of everything, they had stopped being on the Lord’s side. If anyone would have been on the Lord’s side, it should have been the Levites. But they got so caught up in the grumbling, complaining, and the agenda, that they stopped being the Lord’s men.

After the earth opened up and swallowed the main troublemakers, and the princes were burned by fire as judgment from God Himself, the people were upset. But they weren’t upset with the troublemakers. No, their anger was turned against Moses. They were on the wrong side.
There is nothing in this life worth it. Not popularity, not your rights, not your complaints, not your comfort…nothing is worth switching sides. And yet, even today, it can be easy to get caught up in the moment.

We can get involved in an agenda and not realize that we are fighting for something that God is not for. It might be a whole lot more subtle than troublemakers like Korah and Abiram. But by fighting for issues, we can end up not being on the Lord’s side with an attitude less than godly.

I want to be on God’s side.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. Psalm 1:1

Photo credit: Image by Joëlle Moreau from Pixabay