The Human Condition

It is interesting to see the sin nature in play in "compassion." Often the right causes are championed, but it is always causes which are far away from home.

It is frequent to see causes championed by people exclusively outside their zone of influence. The real test for whether compassion is real or fake is how it responds to what it can possibly control or influence.

True compassion takes action and seeks change as it presents itself locally. Many forms of fake compassion champion causes which are comfortable because the heart of the compassion cannot reasonably require action.

Compassion lives or falls on the willingness to take action. Compassion that does not lead to action is empty wind.

The real question for compassion is what are you personally doing. Not what are you telling others to do.

We may be able to influence others, but only after we have been credibly involved in change ourselves.

Method and Motive

A common saying is "all is well that ends well." There is some truth to it. We cannot and should not obsess about what could have happened or might have happened.

But in life, motive and methods are key to Christian ethics. You see the bible does not judge human action by external actions only.

Often we will see in life a person with many awards for philanthropy or designations for this or that cause reveal their true character. You see men judge by what could be seen outward actions. But the real truth lied within the heart.

It is ultimately motive and truly seeking the right methods which pleases God. Of course a heart motivated and filled with truth will act.

A heart right before God is a heart which wishes to act. But often there are many outward movements which have the form of a heart right before God, but motive is not there.

We cannot know the heart of others in life, but it is the reason so many people are found out to not be the people we thought they were. They were following external forms for this or that reason with internal reality.

You see the bible is summed in two principles, "love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, so and strength," and "love your neighbor as yourself." You see the world cannot keep the law of God because only what is done out of love for God is truly good.

The world often approximates the good and many non-believers do immense amounts of good works in the world. But it falls short of the ultimate reality of living all of life unto God.

Prayer and Action

Prayer must motivate action in the prayer. Obviously we often pray for things outside our control. We are people with limited resources and abilities.

At times though we pray about problems which we can and are able to be a part of the solution. The test of the faithfulness of prayer is if we have been praying and God offers us a chance to take part in the solution for which we are praying-do we grasp it?

You see at many times in the Christian life it becomes very easy to move through the motions. Prayer can easily become a habit with no meaning or sincerity behind it.

When we pray about things that intersect with our life in even a small way we should look to see if we may be part of the solution for what we are praying for. You see maybe the issue was too big for us yesterday, or we had no idea how to proceed, but today God has opened the door for us to solve the problem.

You see it is not mankind that solves problems ultimately but God. If we pray but do not consider how we may be part of the solutions to the problems in our prayers then we have not really prayed with any sincerity.

Too often prayer in the world today is an excuse for inaction. If I spend a few minutes praying then I have cared for the issue. You see the error is that true prayer is based on love and desires the result prayed for and will always consider that if it is possible for us to solve the problem we will.

It is often not in our power but if we pray in truth we must be open to solve the problems if God opens doors for us.

Forgiving Ourselves and Action

Often in life we need to have an attitude of forgiving ourselves in advance. It is not that we should seek to sin; that would be wrong. But often attempting to avoid sin at all costs leads to debilitating inaction.

Maybe we need to have a conversation with a brother or a sister in Christ about something going on. Maybe we need to confront this or that wrong in the world. You see if we are too concerned about not making a mistake we cannot work out our faith in the world..

The bible calls us to act. Sometime when we act against a wrong in the world things can be strange and at times a bit messy.

We need to allow ourselves the grace to understand that it is better to act out of a sincere heart and enter into a difficult situation than it is to seek purity at all costs. Of course the sincerity is of great importance.

I believe at times our sincerity may be best judged by our reluctance to enter into the situation to fix the wrong. You see we value peace and unity, but we know action is necessary, because peace at all costs is not true peace.

Sometimes we need to act and realize that if we have acted by faith we have done right whatever happens. You see God calls us to act, but success is what he grants.

We can act in great faith pleasing to God and not right a wrong. He calls us to act in faith, but the result is in his hands not ours.

Righteousness Requires Action

Righteousness is being set apart and different than the world. Often the church mostly sees righteousness in avoidance of certain actions.

Of course righteousness is avoiding sin, but it is also active. Often righteousness requires us to act. The world often has very little concern for certain issues.

True biblical righteousness requires that we act. Jesus did not simply avoid sin perfectly as his fulfillment of all righteousness. He also acted and his action completed his perfect righteousness.

The Pharisees misunderstood the law by making it fulfillable by the keeping of external states and avoidance of sin. They missed the fact that active righteousness and concern for the other is the core of righteousness.

True righteousness understands that love is more important then religious expectations when these collide. Jesus did what was right when he worked on the Sabbath to alleviate dire suffering.

Love is Not an Absence of Sin

It is very strange in the current day that some theologians have begun to define love as an absence. All discussion around love are what love is not.

It is difficult for these theologians to speak of what love positively is. They can talk for hours about what love is not. They tend to turn positive statements about love in the bible into the converse negatives of what love is not.

The bible gives negative and positive guidance about many things. It is important to keep the tense of the biblical teaching.

It is interesting that theologians who cannot speak positively of love also tend to turn all positive statements in the bible into negative statements which roughly correlate.

You see this is a great error. Christianity is an active religion, not a religion of absence. Love is a presence. It is positive power, not a lack of sin.

We can have a relaxing day at home alone avoiding sin, but we are not positively expressing love. There is nothing wrong with the relaxing day at home, but to be clear we have not expressed love if we sit at home alone for a day with no contact with the world.

Love is active. The bible uses many active statements about love because love is an action. The negative statements of what love is not in the bible clarify what love positively is.

Negative statements of what love is not are not a denial that love is an action. We must be very careful to read what the bible says. It is not scriptural to read what the bible says and then always modify it into a different form.

It is a form of redaction to turn the whole of scripture into a set of negative commandments. The bible is full of positive commands for living. To change the tense of the commands from positive to negative is to redact scripture.

Knowing One's Limits

A popular Christian book in recent years started off with the author writing that they were writing the book because they were poor at the topic. The author wrote the book to understand and grasp the topic.

The book has many good qualities and has been very well received. Of course it takes the author two thirds of the book to explain the problem and the solution to the problem is woefully low.

The shame of course is how well the book has been received. The author never understood the topic and people have flocked to a book with partial answers.

It is interesting that often a lot of the lack of quality in action comes from doing too much. The author wrote a book which he was not prepared to write and his audience read a book that did not have really adequate solutions to the problem the book addresses.

You see while the book probably has done a great deal of good and done more good than most books it is also really woefully inadequate. Sometimes we can do more by having the humility to do less.

It is often the case that if we have a few projects we see of value and we attempt 1-2 projects with zeal more good will come of it than if we do 5 projects with great haste and sloppiness.

It is not always the case, but it is easy to try to do too much and thus accomplish too little. This is of course why the bible has a theology both of work and of rest.

The bible tells man to be diligent. The bible also tells man to rest and enjoy life and trust that leisure and enjoying the world is good.

I have heard many preacher criticize men who go home and watch sports on a Sunday afternoon. The man who kicks back after a long week and relaxes watching sports after a long week is not doing anything wrong.

Maybe there is validity to some criticism if it is nuanced, but ultimately God made the Sabbath for man to rest. Many pastors seem to act as if Sabbath was made for a regime of strict all day worship. Really they need to open up their bibles and read Jesus' condemnation of their unbalanced perspective on life.

God created man to be happy and have joy. Of course the ultimate joy of man is in God, but God also created man to delight in the fullness of the world he has made.

Action and Prayer

Prayer is a beautiful gift of God to man. God wishes for man to come into his presence to speak to him.

Not all prayer is beautiful. Sometimes prayer becomes an easy excuse in the church.

There is a problem and I will pray about it. My contribution to the problem is prayer.

You see this is often enough but sometimes as we pray we should be open to the fact that we may be part of the solution. Often the solutions to things our outside of us, but we need an openness to act.

Over time you will see there are many people who appear not open to act. They are often very open to pray, however.

Prayer and action need to be linked. Why would we pray for a solution if the solution is within our grasp?

Maybe the solution is not within our grasp but with prayer and thought maybe we can be part of the solution.

You see it is always important to desire to be part of the resolution to issues. If we have an ability to play a part than we should play a part.

Of course we should rest. We cannot minister 24/7 nor should we. Jesus rested and did not always minister.

You see many excuses that I am too tired. I am too mentally tired, or I am spiritually tired.

Sometimes it is true but often especially last two cases of being mentally or spiritually tired charitable work or good deeds of helping others often have an uplifting effect on the human psyche.

Sometimes I will feel in a terrible mood and that helping the world is the last thing I have energy to do. And then I do something to help and feel better.

You see my problem was that in thinking about myself too much I had turned inward and my mind became poisoned by my self-centeredness. When I looked to help the other I felt better because the issue was that I spent too much time thinking of myself.

It is not always the case but there is great joy in helping others. Even if our work involves helping others you see if we are paid we have received a reward for our work.

The reward of pay does not invalidate the goodness of what is done and we should do everything to the glory of God. But there is always something more uplifting about doing good when we receive no monetary incentive.

Being Someone

Obviously change of any type cannot come about without action in the world. But often action without foundation is futile.

Many times our efforts our undermined by our lack of preparation. One thinks of Billy Graham who suggested that at the end of his ministry one thing he would change if he did his ministry again was to spend more studying and less time preaching.

Often to have an affect we must first be someone. Many people feel that spending hours in prayer, studying God's word or studying theology will in some sense be a waste.

It is interesting because the bible does not have this view of itself. We need to do something relevant the modern church says.

The bible describes itself as relevant. We need to sit before the feet of God. To sit with Jesus and listen to what he has to say is more relevant that action at times.

Often the issue is we do too much and focus too little on trying to know God. We can often do far more by trying to do far less.

The bible makes the case of this by the concept of Sabbath. Really at the heart is the idea that in 6 days we can do more with faith than 7 days without faith.

Motive in Ethics is Key

It seems common sense that motive is an important part of ethics. It almost seems to go without saying that why we do something is often very important in understanding whether an action is good or bad.

Interestingly the idea that motive matters in ethics is under attack by many of today's philosophies. They seem to equate that the result rather than the motive is what is important.

There does seem to be a certain value in placing result as the primary evaluation of ethics rather than motive, since a lot of people seem pretty confused about what it means to be a good person. The Bible clearly shows that ethics consists of many elements one of which is motive.

The practical applications are many of motive as a part of ethics. The bible frequently talks about not pushing forward ones good works. Why? The motive of pride spoils most of the ethical nature of works.

A phrase which is fairly common, but holds a lot of value is "speaking the truth in love." It is easy to think that simply speaking the truth is loving, but the reality is that there is a huge amount of discernment needed in when to speak the truth and when to wait for a better moment or when to say nothing at all.

Prayer an Easy Out?

Sometimes you find Christians will use prayer as an easy out. Have I done something wrong or sense that there is some action I can take? Of course I will pray about it.

I do not wish to criticize prayer in any way. There is nothing wrong with prayer. Just as there is nothing wrong with food it can be abused if misused.

As Christians a quick response to every issue is to pray. This is a godly prospective in general, but you often see people hide behind prayer to avoid the good action which they should do.

Maybe prayer is an easy out at times because of the private nature of it. But really even prayer can be sin if we are using it as an "action" to avoid the action which we should really carry out in the world.

The bible does teach that the ideal mode of Christian living is to pray without ceasing. But you can always turn the good into evil. A good example from the bible is how Satan twists God's word by misquoting it (taking it from context) to tempt Jesus to sin.