Right or Wrong

As a K-12 music teacher I have heard a creative assortment of reasons for the poor choices my students make. I am certain that I haven't heard them all, but my students have used everything from "I didn't know that would happen," to "it seemed like a good idea at the time," to "you didn't tell me I couldn't," to "how could I resist?" And the list goes on. There are moments when I have to give credit for creativity, and other moments when I have to give grace for true ignorance. However, there are some excuses that are really no excuse at all. The one that really gets my goat goes something like this;

"I didn't mean to do it."

 Let's suspend the probable reality surrounding the majority of these situations and assume that this statement--"I didn't mean to do it"--is actually true. My first reaction to this excuse (at least internally if not actually spoken to the perpetrator) is a very simple question. "What did you mean to do?"
What I have found is that there are a frightening number of people in our world (most likely every one of us has been guilty of this at some point in our lives) who honestly don't mean to do bad things, yet somehow find themselves doing those very things anyway. We don't mean to hurt people. We don't mean to lie. We don't mean to talk about people behind their back. We don't mean to steal. No one starts out their life thinking, "I am going to go out and make a series of poor choices that will lead down a path of irresponsible and destructive living." We don't mean to do it!
But what do we mean to do?
My students can tell me until they are blue in the face that they don't mean to behave poorly, but that doesn't mean a thing to me until they can tell me what they are trying to do to live rightly and to make good choices. As humans it is in our nature to follow a pattern. Given the choice between right and wrong, wrong is almost always the easiest, most enticing, most natural direction for us to move. Therefore, if we do not mean to do the right thing--working at it, striving for it--we will automatically do the wrong thing...whether we mean to or not. There is no neutral ground. We are either trudging forward or we are running or falling backward. The slope is too slippery to simply stand still and hope we won't get dirty. If we don't fight in the battle, we are guaranteed to lose.
I don't pretend for a moment that any one of us can live perfectly right by trying in our own effort to do so. Some times our perception of right is distorted so that even in trying to do right we do the other thing (speaking from unfortunate and painful experience). We can't possibly be mindful of every facet of right and wrong. While trying to do right in one area we will slip up in another.
I don't expect perfection from my students. I expect effort. I expect them to fight within themselves for what is right and good. It won't be perfect.
Only one perfect person has ever walked this earth. He has offered his help, and his is the only help that can truly get us moving toward the ultimate goal of perfect rightness. Until we get there, however, we're going to make some mistakes...even though we don't mean to.