Cobra Kai Message

 

In Cobra Kai Season 3, Episode 3 I forgot to mention in my earlier review a very important scene in which Johnny visit a Pastor friend and fellow former Cobra Kai Student. The Pastor takes down a grieving Johnny in the church service and then talks to him. In their exchange Johnny talks about he did the right thing, changed Cobra Kai to be good and all his students got hurt rather than things getting better. The Pastor then offers a line that is so important to remember, “You don’t do the right thing because it always works out, you do the right thing because its the right thing to do.” 

We are conditioned to think of if we do the right thing everything will get better, and we will float on a cloud of victory. The truth is usually the opposite, doing the right thing can cost you, financially, personally, and in other ways. Richard Wurmbrandt did the right thing and became tortured for Christ, Diedrich Bonhoffer did the right thing and was executed for fighting the Third Reich, and a church pastor I know of did the right thing and lost his church and salary, his congregation has to meet at coffee shops and parking lots. The right thing will cost you, that is why there is the adage, “no good deed goes unpunished,” which illustrates that doing right can lead to personal strife and even persecution. You cannot equate doing the right thing as being unsuccessful if things turn bad afterwards. That is the prosperity doctrine that says do good and get good back, well the apostles did good and all but John were martyred, John was boiled alive three times, which made his skin agonizing to feel the wind. Jesus did the right thing and was crucified by the do good religious caste. 

We have to take that song in Thw Prince of Egypt, “look at your life through heaven’s eyes,” that means when you do the right and suffer, look at it as God who suffered would look at it. This requires us to remove our faulty glasses placed on us by prosperity teachers and heed what this pastor in Cobra Kai says, “You don’t do the right thing because it always works out, you do the right thing because its the right thing..” Amen.