Fighting the Good Fight
Why you need to wage the battles of your own soul before battling injustices in the world outside
Good morning!
What does it mean to fight the good fight?
In the constant battle between good and evil, we can sometimes get bogged down and forget what it’s all about; if we’re not careful, we can all too easily allow our emotions to dictate what we believe to be true, switching from normal and empathetic creatures to those that desire the demise of others, seeking revenge and wanting justice, but only when we’ve been hurt, not when we’ve hurt others.
The truth is, as creatures of emotion, we are deeply reactionary beings; something happens, and we react. After all, the ability to react to changing stimuli is one of the fundamental characteristics of all living organisms.
The problem is when we take our virtues and all we stand for and put them aside to address something that has hurt us; in those moments of anger, frustration, and immense grief, we all too often put aside our morality and commit actions we will soon thereafter regret.
Fighting the good fight has as much to do with fighting against injustice and the blatant evils of the world as it does with fighting against our own falling nature; to take this to the extreme, many films and TV series have explored the idea of vigilantes — people who commit crimes, often murder, against those they deem vile and undeserving of continued life due to their many crimes against humanity. However, that idea rarely brings good fruit, for “If you kill a killer, the number of killers in the world remains the same” (source unknown).
Our world, due to the fallen nature of man, is naturally always heading towards chaos, entropy leading us into disarray; to fight the good fight, though it does mean promoting justice and stopping criminals from harming others (with due process), also means that we must wage the war inside of ourselves against our own corruption; if we are not careful, we can fall into all sorts of compromise, and we must remain vigilant if we are to desire walking on the straight and narrow.
TL;DR: Fighting the good fight, while it does mean fighting injustice in the world around us, also means waging the war inside ourselves against our own corruption, choosing with great intentionality to be good people. Let’s focus inward before we try fixing the rest of the world.
God bless you, have a great day!
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