Un-Righteous

<p>I started noticing the word "unrighteousness" in the Bible. I thought, why not use a stronger word like wickedness or depravity? Why just put an “un” in front of righteousness? But I’m not an ancient language scholar, and I assume Bible translation teams know what they’re doing. So, I let the question remain in my mind, holding it loosely to see if God might answer.</p><p>.</p><p>And soon after, I noticed something. A young deer, lifeless, discarded on the side of the road. It was probably hit by a car on its way to the woods. Maybe it was following its mother but got scared and froze. Maybe the driver stopped. Maybe they didn’t. But now, the body that was once warm and breathing was now cold, its insides turned outward. Pink. Those innards, those intestines and kidneys, should have been tucked safely inside the deer’s belly. Kept warm by skin and fur. Instead, someone had draped an old coat over the dead body to hide its ugliness. But the wind snatched the coat away.</p><p>.</p><p>Un-righteous. A perversion of what is right and good. Wholeness become un-wholeness. Life become death. Innocence become collateral damage. That’s what sin does. Sin takes what is good and lovely and turns its insides out. That’s what happened to the world when the first humans went their own way against God. All that God made, everything that existed, was good. But our sin made things un-good. Twisted. Broken. Violent. Un-righteous. Now, instead of doing good, we kill. We steal. We destroy. We let our greed trample the innocent. We revert to self-preservation and accusation. We do what is un-righteous.</p><p>.</p><p>But God still loves His creation. He still loves us. And He came to save us. When Jesus lived among us, He embodied righteousness. All He did was good, through and through. No mixed motives, no “ends-justify-the-means” rationale. And yet, we killed Him. We turned His insides out, ripped at His flesh and exposed His blood to the sky. And He let us. Because He wanted to forgive us. . . and set His creation free from unrig