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When we try to live by “Don’t Be Evil,” we find that we end up being evil in the end. There’s a better way.
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Well, happy Independence Day week. I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend, and I’m so glad to have you here with me, that we get to study God’s Word. We have the freedom to do that on this Independence Day Monday. We’re continuing our series, Proverbially Speaking, looking at Proverbs chapter 3, and today we’re picking up where we were last week.
Last week we talked about how instead of being those who just try to avoid being evil, following Google’s old motto, “Don’t be evil,” we instead try to be good. And we talked about how the Proverbs point us to the things that God calls good that he wants us to do. But it’s worth going back to that motto, and think about the early Google.
If you were online during the first part of this millennium, you remember when Google emerged, it was a scrappy upstart. Its website was really, really basic, but it had fantastic search. Everyone loved it. And with Google emerging, something started to change. Over the late ‘90s, as the internet became more available to all of us, we also watched as Microsoft made its web browser more and more dominant, and as it did, it became more and more necessary to use it.
If you were using a Mac, or if you used Netscape on Windows, or anything like that, they increasingly didn’t work right. And you’d go to a website and say, “Best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer.” The reason wasn’t just because everyone loved that browser, it was because it was available on every Windows computer, so most computers, and it had special features in it that if people coded for them, and it made developing websites easier, it wouldn’t work on other browsers. And that was intentional.
When Google said it was going to live by the motto, “Don’t be evil,” it meant, “We’re not going to do stuff like that.” And so the early Google search, it didn’t have evil ads that tried to trick you, and it used every standard possible. It didn’t depend on all that stuff. And so it started to change the whole way the internet worked.
Maybe you happened to use Firefox, or maybe you even remember when Google released its browser Chrome, which quite possibly you’re watching this video in tonight. When it did, it was different. It didn’t break standards, it followed them, it implemented them. There was this beautiful season in which “Don’t be evil” meant, let’s actually do what makes it easier to be on the internet together, and it was wonderful.
But then Google’s browser became more and more popular, and they demonstrated why “Don’t be evil” is a challenge, because it started to become tempting to go ahead and put in their own non-standard bits that would make people say, “Best if viewed by Google Chrome.” And today, if you try to use anything else, I happen to—if you happen to use anything else though, you’ll find that some websites don’t load correctly, just like the ‘90s all over again.
The danger of trying to “Don’t be evil” rather than “Do good.” Because even at its best, and Google has quit even saying that motto anymore, but even at its best, when you’re thinking, how do I live by “Don’t be evil,” you’re thinking, here’s an evil thing, and I’m not going to do it. Here’s another evil thing, and I’m not going to do it.
And tonight, as we turn back to Proverbs 3, what we’re being told is, don’t live that way. Focus on what we talked about last week. Live by doing what’s good. Let’s pray tonight that we can be people who do that. Will you pray with me, please?
Father, would you help us to be those who live by doing what is good? Help us to not meditate on what’s evil and then just hold back from it, but rather to meditate on what’s good and to actually do it. Lord, we pray that you’d help us to be that kind of people. We pray that in Jesus’ precious name today. Amen.
Evil actions, even evil thoughts, they actually break down the very community that God is building. Take a look at verse 29 of Proverbs 3. It says, “Do not plan evil against your neighbor who dwells trustingly beside you.”
I think about that late part of the first decade of the 2000s when all these web standards were coming up and we saw all kinds of new things: Gmail and fantastic mapping and iPhones that you could carry and view the whole web in your pocket. All these amazing things that transformed how we actually communicate and function today as a society. They were built in part on these standards.
There were these informal communities that came together and said, let’s implement this and we’ll do it together so everyone can use it. And it was great until those little non-standard things started creeping back in, started to break down community. And then everyone wants to do their own thing again. And that’s how it is when we live by “Don’t be evil.”
What happens when we plot? We break down trust. We break down community. And the key thing here, I think this is so important for us to hear in verse 29, it doesn’t say don’t live out plots against your neighbor. It’s not talking about don’t go through your neighborhood and cause all kinds of trouble. It’s saying don’t even contemplate, don’t plot against your neighbor.
Why? Because the very act of building up even inside ourselves starts to break us down and move us to the point where we go from “Don’t be evil,” to “I’ll go ahead and do a little evil,” and then a lot of evil.
Consider Genesis 3 verse 4: “But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.” Eve has just told the serpent she’s not allowed to eat from that one tree. Serpent goes on, “For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
What does the serpent say here? “You’re not going to die. God just wants to withhold this from you.” And he’s led up to this by saying, “God said that you’re not supposed to eat of any tree, right? You can’t eat anything in the garden.” What’s Satan doing here? He’s trying to break down Eve’s trust towards God and maybe to Adam.
We don’t know the exact picture, but perhaps God has spoken to Adam and Adam had told Eve what she was allowed to eat and not. So it may have been a two-pronged breakdown of trust at the same time. In any case, the serpent’s goal is clear: break down that trust, start Eve on the path of plotting evil.
At first, Eve may not think, “I’m going to eat this,” but you know, maybe you’re right. Maybe I should look at it. We’re told she looks at the fruit and says, “Well, that looks pretty good.” There’s the danger. She’s gone from, “I know I shouldn’t even consider it,” to “Well, it doesn’t hurt to look,” right? We’ve all done that at different times.
I was thinking back to 4th of July’s past. My cousins, Paul and Donna, would host 4th of July every year. And Donna always, she’d set up this island in their kitchen with all kinds of wonderful snacks. And the one that I always think of, she made them every year, were these little turtles where she’d take the little caramel and chocolate candy and press it into a pretzel. So it was that sweet and salty caramel taste and it was wonderful.
And I’d eat one when we’d get there and everyone’s sort of standing around the island and then you’d be standing there talking, “Well, it’s been a couple of minutes, maybe I’ll eat another one.” And at some point I’d think, “Well, I shouldn’t eat any more of these.” And maybe you’d go out onto the patio and be talking, but I think, boy, that sweet and salty taste. I’m not usually a big snacker, but on those hot 4th of July days, it’d start to drift in my mind. It doesn’t hurt to think about it. I’m not going to eat any more of them, but I’ll think about it.
Well, soon I was going to go get maybe another cup of water because it’s hot outside and, well, as long as you’re in there, you might as well eat another one, right? We’ve all been in those places where we say, “I’m not going to do something, but it doesn’t really hurt to think about it,” right? I can think about it at least. What happens? We think about it. When we think about it, we all know a lot of times we end up doing it.
That’s what Eve does. She starts to think about the fruit and then she does it. When we start to plot evil, that’s what we’re talking about in Proverbs 3. What happens? We say, “Well, it doesn’t hurt to think about it,” but plotting is the first step to doing. And so when we think about anything from those simple things that really are relatively harmless—it’s harmless to eat another one of those turtles, at least relatively speaking—that’s a different order of magnitude, but the whole process happening inside of us is really the same as what happens when we plot bigger, more terrible things, right?
We think of something that’s actually going to harm someone, something really bad. It’s not really totally different. The same process, the same way our mind starts to feel pretty good because we’re thinking about this thing we’re not really going to do, but we kind of think that maybe we would do it. And then we think, “Well, maybe I could do it.” And then we just run off that high until we actually go and we do it.
It’s different in magnitude, but not kind. It’s the same way that we fall into temptation every time. And that’s why I think it’s so key here that we’re told not to plot while our neighbor is trusting. The neighbor is off in the distance. We’re not able to do anything evil in that moment, but we’re thinking about it. And Proverbs says, don’t do that. God doesn’t want us to do that.
Sometimes it feels like thinking about what we could do if we were actually going to do it will be catharsis. It will be something that kind of gets it out of our system, and then we won’t actually do something. We think thinking about sin maybe is a good way to avoid doing sin, but that’s really just rationalization. It doesn’t work.
And so when we formulate evil, even when we plan not to do it, what do we know? We’re going to be tempted to do it. So we shouldn’t even nurture it in our heads. We should fight actively against it.
If it isn’t a delicious turtle, but some thing we relish doing that would somehow get revenge or make ourselves look right or smart at the cost of someone else, if we want to justify ourselves, we say, “No, I don’t want to even feed that. I don’t even want to admire how good it would be if I could do it. I don’t want to laugh about it and think, ‘Oh, that would be nice if I could do it.’ No, I’m just not going to do it all,” because that delivery truck of sin is going to pull right up.
And then what happens? So we don’t even think about it. But then as we go on to verse 30, it goes on and talks about what we might actively do, too. It says that we shouldn’t cause contention.
Verse 30: “Do not accuse anyone without legitimate cause if he has not treated you wrongly.” Do not just go and complain to complain. Don’t cause arguments to cause arguments. Don’t cause contention.
Now, the term here could very well be focused on legal sorts of contention, right? I’m going to bring a case against someone, and it certainly ties in with Jesus’ warning, “Don’t be constantly trying to drag people off to court.” But most of us don’t spend a lot of time dragging people off to court, and it still applies. We have plenty of ways we can cause contention.
We know we can bring up something that’s going to cause a disagreement, it’s going to cause a fight, it’s going to make people sad or feel bad, that we can take something and actually turn things into a less positive direction, and sometimes even enjoy it, or at least feel justified in it. And what verse 30 says is don’t do that. Don’t do that.
Just look at it one more time: “Do not accuse anyone without legitimate cause,” could be translated, “Do not cause contention, if he has not treated you wrongly.” In other words, don’t be frivolous about it.
Are there times that there are genuine things that require contention, that require even a lawsuit? Yes. Absolutely. I want to be clear about that. This is not saying always let everything just roll over you. It’s not that.
But it’s saying think about it for a moment. Because most of the time, we’re not going to be justified. Most of the time, we’re not going to actually make things right. We just feel cranky, and we want to let it out. We feel wronged, and we want other people to feel wronged, too.
That’s the case. We’ve taken that plotting, “Ah, this thing’s festering.” And now we’ve moved it to, “No, this thing, I’m going to bring it out to life.” But it doesn’t hurt, right? Because I’m just bringing up what’s been wronged.
What God’s calling us to do is say, well, what’s the gain? Are you actually avoiding being evil? Good for you. Are you just living by “Don’t be evil,” though? Or are you actually living for doing good? Are you bringing good about? And that should always be one of the big questions we ask: can good come out of this?
Now sometimes good can be hindering further evil. We should be very clear about that. That’s why sometimes we do need to cause a stir. We need to bring up something that’s wrong. But if we know that it’s just going to cause a stir, it’s not going to improve anything, it’s not going to help anybody, it’s just as frivolous as the craziest, frivolous lawsuit we ever hear about.
A lawsuit like the one from Alan Heckard back about 10 years ago. See, Alan Heckard likes to play basketball. He’s a relatively tall guy, relatively fit guy, and he felt like his life had been ruined. The reason he felt like his life had been ruined is that people thought he looked like Michael Jordan.
And he said it was awful. He just wanted to go to the basketball court and go play some ball, and what would happen to him? People would tease him, or even genuinely mistake him for Michael Jordan, and it disrupted his life. He said he couldn’t just live his life the way he wanted because he looked too much like Michael Jordan.
So what did he decide to do about it? He decided to sue Michael Jordan and Nike for a combined total of around $800 million in emotional distress because he’d gone through so much torture because Michael Jordan had the audacity to look like him.
And apparently he thought he was going to somehow prevail in this case, but anyone looking at it thought, this is ridiculous. You can’t sue a celebrity for looking like you or you looking like them. Can’t sue someone who hires that celebrity as a spokesperson for promoting that celebrity and causing you to have people come up to you and say, “Hey, are you Michael Jordan?”
Most people would probably be happy with that. “Oh, you think I look like Michael Jordan? Why, thank you.” But no, no, he wasn’t happy with that, but the case was thrown out. He didn’t get a dime of it. Why? Because it was a frivolous lawsuit. You can’t do that.
Did he feel maybe better in the moment that he got to see the legal papers that had Alan Heckard versus Michael Jordan? He felt like, yeah, I’m really showing it to the man. I’m bringing up how he’s made my life miserable, possibly. But in the end, you know what? He presumably ended up poor, right? People were hesitant to hire him. People might have thought he just made a mockery of him for making this lawsuit up, and he also made anyone involved with Michael Jordan and Nike and so on miserable, too, because they had to deal with this stupid, frivolous lawsuit. He tied up the courts and made other people wait for legitimate lawsuits. Everything he did was counterproductive.
But somehow, as he plotted that evil, it seemed like maybe it could be good. It seemed like maybe it could do something. And I bet at one point, maybe someone even joked, “Hey, you should sue Michael Jordan. Ha ha ha.” And he let it just sit in there for a while until he actually acted on it.
How often do we contend, we bring up controversy, we cause provocation, and it doesn’t actually have any hope, any hope, any reasonable hope at all of actually doing anything good at all?
We just get to be right, or we just get to let off some steam. The guy says, don’t do that. I don’t want you just to avoid being evil, where, say, you make up outright lies. This man wasn’t lying that he kind of, sort of, if you squint, looks like Michael Jordan. I don’t know if I entirely see it. You should look him up online. See what you think.
Okay, let’s even say, you could at least, he didn’t have to outright lie about it. So he wasn’t maybe being evil. But “Don’t be evil” isn’t a high enough standard. The “Be good” would have been, live it up the best you can, because you can’t stop Michael Jordan from being Michael Jordan just because you look like him.
But you can make the best of it. You can be amused when someone comes up to you on the basketball court and thinks you look like Michael Jordan. You could do that, and that’d be good, and it would be productive.
God says to be agents of healing, not agents of breaking. That’s what we’re encouraged to do today. We be agents of healing, not breaking.
We ask, how am I not just holding back from doing every evil thing I’d like to do? But how can I drive towards what is actually good? How can I take even the bad things that happen, real, genuine bad things—I don’t have to excuse them—we’ve been talking about that on and off over the weeks. But instead of focusing on how can I simply get back, how can I help, somehow, people to be better, point them more to Jesus, to make the world just a little better, to, as Steve Jobs once said, make a dent in the universe.
But not just any dent. Make a dent for Jesus.
Sometimes it feels awfully small. If you’re the guy that isn’t Michael Jordan that’s suing, it feels like you can’t do a whole lot. What small thing could he have done, maybe, for some kids that wanted to play with someone who at least looked like Michael Jordan? What kind of things could he do? And what kind of things could you do, and could I do?
What time are you tempted to say something around a water cooler, or on social media, or to family and friends, a family get-together, like 4th of July? It only causes contention instead of we could say something that’s healing, that’s edifying, that points to Jesus.
God wants us to be his agents every day, and being his agents doesn’t mean just living by “Don’t be evil.” It means by living by what he does for us. Living in that truth of his care, helping other people to know it, and to experience it.
Pray with me. Father, we do thank you for your love and your care. Would you help us to be those who live truly by not just the motto, “Don’t be evil,” but rather we live by being good. Would you help us to do that, Lord? Would you help us to be the people, the men and women that you want us to be, showing more of your truth and your love in this world, all around this world? We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Here’s the thing you need to know if you don’t already: God is that for you. He does good. He doesn’t just hold back evil. All you need to do is trust in Jesus, and if you haven’t, you can use the number that you see on screen, 833-356-4032, that’s 833-356-4032, text in. We’d love to pray with you. You can also just leave a comment in the comments below. We’d love to pray with you there.
Either way, it’d be great to hear from you, and as you do, we can bless each other. We can be agents of good together. I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week. Happy rest of this America’s 250 birthday week, because it’s wonderful to celebrate the blessings that God has given us, and it is a blessing to live in a country where I can stand outside in this neighborhood and be preaching God’s word and preach without fear. What a blessing that is.
I mean, we all have that blessing that are here, and for our online family around the world, I know many of you do, and for those that don’t, let’s be praying for more freedom to proclaim God’s gospel for all of our brothers and sisters in Christ this week.
Have a wonderful and blessed week, and I’ll see you again very soon. God bless you.
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