day 1069: Evil

"Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God."

Google has in their mission statement to "Do no evil".  It's a good and noble mission, but really hard to define and pin down as a definition. Their direction was born out of software engineers/techies who don't want to see technology be used in forms that take advantage of people, invade on the rights or the privacy of users, steal code from competitors, or otherwise do things that people would think unsavory or wrong.  The other day I was talking to a fellow entrepreneur, and he described a company that had recently changed its' business model and user capabilities to be more restrictive, (before you pay I might add), and he described them as "evil".  Interestingly, the other dynamics here are that this company is number one in its' space, has grown through user-submittted data and depends on the activity of its' users to keep the site relevant and needed (and it is both right now in a huge way).  Recently, they moved the bar on what you can do free versus paid, forcing more people to have to pay before they could do what they were able to do before for for free.  Are they evil?  I don't think that is the word, but it's a good lesson to watch and learn from.  If a product or service depends on the user to be the content creators and then turns around and begins to charge (even if fairly) for the user to manipulate, search freely, or maximize the use of their own content, then the term "evil" may get applied.  No one wants to be thought of as evil, and once tagged as such, it is hard to turn it around.

We don't usually use the word "evil" for people unless they do something heinous.  But, that doesn't mean that we can't be seen as "untruthful", "unfair", "duplicitous", "uncaring", etc. and in the mind of others, be right on the edge of the "e" word.  We have to be careful and watchful if we want to be role models for Christ and have the opportunity to profess our faith in a way that others will want to listen and recognize credibility and authenticity.  All day long today we will have the opportunity to draw a bright line between us and evil, or the likes of evil.  It only takes a misstep to cross the reputation line so let's be more than careful.  Let's be diligent and forthright in how we conduct ourselves today and everyday.

Reference: Romans 6:13 (New Living Translation)