Your Good Side

According to a recent scientific study, there no longer remains a question of which is your good side and which is your bad side. We humans prefer looking at the left side of a face, finding it more pleasant.

Researchers took photos of 10 male and 10 female faces, and created a series of originals and mirror images, so that a right cheek could be made to look like a left or the other way around. When asked, 37 male and female college students overwhelmingly favored the left side, and it didn’t matter whether the left side was the original or the mirrored version.

From science we’ve learned that our left side is our good side.  On the other hand, have you ever heard someone say, “Be careful, you don’t want to get on my bad side?” 

This phrase – “a person’s bad side” – has nothing to do with the right or left side of one’s face.  Instead it suggests that there is a side of us that not just permits, but encourages and justifies anger, moodiness, aggressive behavior, shouting, belittling, bullying, violence and pain towards other people.

Such behavior is always selfish, boorish and immature.  It is an escape from responsibility.  It is a weak excuse for proper living.  It is a masquerade for strength, when in fact it is the most visible evidence of personal insecurity and weakness.

This phrase – “don’t get on my bad side” -- suggests that we have two sides, and that we are destined to go through life like this.  The erroneous logic argues that certain events, beyond our control, automatically trigger our bad side.  And our response, no matter how monstrous or devilish, is the unstoppable tail-end collision in a chain reaction.  There’s simply nothing we can do about it – it’s just the way we are.

I once knew for a person who seemed to have two sides.  At work he would intentionally treat his employees with a never-ending flow of anger, profanity and threatening behaviors.  But when he was with his family and in public settings, he was a perfect gentleman.  The contrasts in behavior were stark and startling.  And also unbelievable.  It just didn’t ring true.

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Polonius gives a last piece of advice to his son Laertes, who is in a hurry to get on the next boat to Paris:

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. “

Being true to our own selves means that we regularly inspect the inner vessel and cleanse it of all impurities, pretenders and pollutants.  It means that we honor our heavenly heritage as spiritual sons and daughters of a “one-sided” Heavenly Father.  A Heavenly Father who has only a good side.

Elder David A. Bednar has taught: “Certainly clumsy, embarrassing, unprincipled, and mean-spirited things do occur in our interactions with other people that would allow us to take offense. However, it ultimately is impossible for another person to offend you or to offend me. Indeed, believing that another person offended us is fundamentally false. To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else,” October 2006 General Conference, “And Nothing Shall Offend Them”.

Our challenge is not to balance our good side with our bad side.  Our challenge is to destroy the bad side.  The Savior teaches this clearly:

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24).

You cannot create a life of deep joy and contentment by maintaining a bad side and a good side.  The inconsistencies will wear you out – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  This is not a plan for happiness.  Our “bad side” is another term for the natural man.  The original sentence can be restated as, “Be careful, you don’t want me to act like a natural man.” 

We learn from King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon that the natural man is “an enemy to God”.  When a difficult behavioral choice is placed before us, we must “yield to the enticings of the Holy Ghost”, thus preventing our own attack on another person – regardless of their provocations.  Each time we attack another person using the tools of the natural man, the chains of hell pull us one link closer towards an unquenchable flame of personal destruction.  The consequences of yielding to our bad side are serious.

“Therefore if [a] man … dieth an enemy to God, the demands of divine justice do awaken his immortal soul to a lively sense of his own guilt, which doth cause him to shrink from the presence of the Lord, and doth fill his breast with guilt, and pain, and anguish, which is like an unquenchable fire, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever” (Mosiah 2:38).

Thank goodness there is good news in the Gospel!  It is through that power of Christ’s Atonement that our nature can change as we become and remain good.  Indeed we can become one-sided like our Heavenly Father.  King Benjamin describes the attributes that we develop as we seek to become good, “through the atonement of Christ the Lord”.  We “becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him” (Mosiah 3:19). 

As we go forward towards a better day, may we be known as a people with only one side – our good side.