Though they sound almost exactly the same, I think there is an important distinction that deserves attention in our society between being “righteous” and being “right-ish.” But first, let me lay a few things down that will make this whole article a lot easier to follow:
Definitions
- RIGHTEOUS: morally good; morally right and justifiable; arising from an outraged sense of justice
- RIGHT: morally good, justified, or acceptable; true or correct as a fact
- RIGHT-ISH: somewhat right, tending towards what is right
Here is what I think. We cut ourselves a lot of slack…
“Because I’m young”
“Because I am weak”
“Because I am just human”
“Because she is just a girl”
“Because he is just a guy”
“Because I am stressed”
“Because I was drunk”
“Because I have a lot going on”
“Because I didn’t think it through”
Excuses. We all have them. Lies we tell ourselves to avoid the responsibility we don’t want to own. As young people especially, I think we’ve collectively decided that being righteous is too hard, it’s unrealistic… so we replaced the term with “right-ish.”
As long as your actions are right-ish, you’re a good person. As long as you made a decision that was right-ish, you’re decision wasn’t the wrong one. As long as you were trying to do what was right but you ended up doing what was right-ish, your intentions were right and that’s all that matters.
Society has done a good job of telling us that right-ish is just as good as righteous. We shouldn’t expect too much from ourselves because right-ish is close enough to doing the right thing. We are confronted with situations and decisions that don’t always offer a black and white (right and wrong) path to take. Our world has become a pretty gray place…
The mix of black and white into gray has made things difficult for us. The difference between “righteous” and “right-ish” is that one of them is subjective, it is based on relativity, it is dependent on something else – “well at least I didn’t do what he did… what he did was wrong, but I didn’t do that… so that means I did the right thing… right?”
I think we are better than that kind of thinking. We are capable of doing the right thing; we are capable of righteousness. It’s just a choice. It’s all a mindset. Maybe if we all held each other and ourselves up to the standard of righteousness instead of “right-ishness,” our world wouldn’t be such a gray area.
