The family of General Ulysses S Grant owned slaves. Robert E. Lee did not. Republican President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and Affirmative Action. A larger percentage Republicans than Democrats – in both houses of Congress -- voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Even the devil can appear as an angel of light, and it's evident from the Gospels that the disciples failed to see clearly the light of Jesus until some time after his resurrection.

Two of them approached him about sitting on his right hand and his left in the kingdom, showing among other things how little they grasped what the kingdom is all about. To them such a place seemed like a position of power and influence, but Jesus instructed them otherwise.

"Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?"

"We can," they answered.

Jesus said to them, "You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared." (Mark 10:38-40 NIV)

The disciples assumed that the cup of which Jesus spoke was a cup of blessing, as the one in the 23rd Psalm that overflows with the good things of life. But Jesus' cup was different indeed, for he pleaded that if there were any way that cup could pass from his lips, then so let it pass. The cup of which he was to take was his reason for coming to this earth, and he simply had to drink of the vile sins that filled it (Luke 22:42, John 18:11).

To be on his right hand and his left might have been an honor, but at his last there were two men, one on his right hand and his left. Two thieves had that place of honor, and they would have given anything not to have had it. Truly the disciples did not know what they had asked when they requested such a cup.

But, then again, that's the way life is. Things aren't always as they seem.