I was looking in my stash of "keep this stuff because you may need it some day" and found an old article entitled, "Doing what's right." Shucks, I know what is right and I know what is wrong. Well, backing up a tad, since I am a flawed human being, do I always take the high road or do I occasionally slip to the short-cut path when no one is looking because what I am about to do is no big deal?

This little scrap of paper also tells me to report any activity, which could be illegal or harmful, that comes to my attention. Does that mean that I am to "rat" on a friend, colleague, neighbor or even a family member? I remember when I was in school and the principal called every class in the building to meet in the auditorium and announced, "I have been informed that someone" -- I could have sworn he was looking at me -- "stopped up the toilets, set off the alarm, locked the door to the teachers' lounge while they were inside, set off a stink bomb and parked my car in the gym!" Did I imply that I did it? You folks are so suspicious.

When I got older and a bit more refined, I decided that grownups were -- and at least should be -- more honorable. I also found that grownups had many sets of choices when it came to making decisions at home, in everyday encounters and especially at the workplace. What confused me was that the public will allow some leaders or executives to lead less than moral private lives as long as those same leaders provide the public with feelings of well-being, security and future stability. Perhaps we have no right to question someone's private actions, but we do have the right to control someone who doesn't control his or her public responsibilities.

I truly believe that most of us live by very high standards of morality, ethics and appropriate conduct. 

At the same time, realizing that all of us, as hard as we try, fail miserably now and then. That is why we have laws, codes of conduct and social restrictions to help us work and live together in harmony and not in conflict.

Being beyond reproach would be a good thing if we could do it. But this could only be achieved if we lived in a cave apart from humanity and any outside influence. Since we are not capable of perfection and know that God created us to live in community and not in isolation, we do our best.

Before I left home to become a part of the U.S. Navy some 70 years ago, I was given a Gideon Bible at the train station. On the trip, I wrote this on the front leaf of the Bible. "Let me do all the good that I can, every time that I can, to everyone that I can, for as long as I can." I didn't realize that I was paraphrasing the words of John Wesley. By the way, I still have that page taped to the first page of my very old study Bible.

What can I say? Well, from John Wesley Bressler to John Wesley, "Thanks for making a difference in my life."

That, very simply, is doing what is right.

Thanks, God!