Is doing a nice thing still a nice thing? I sometimes wonder whether 'acts of kindness' are really kind if the person performing it is doing it out of a sense of duty instead of love.
One example I could use to illustrate this is apologising. If you apologise to someone and they think you are genuine, but inside you don't mean it, is it a valid apology? Do your intentions affect the meaning of your actions?
I suppose it's a question that I could hypothesise about for days without really coming to a useful conclusion, and I'm not even sure if there is a right answer. Or is it just opinion?
The bible takes two different angles on this. The first refers to a specific example. (I don't know the reference, might be Philippians). It says that even if the bible is preached with ungodly motives (it means like preaching it for our own ends, to make ourselves look and feel better), then the message is still being proclaimed so it doesn't matter! This only applies to God's word bein preached though.
The bible, and this is paraphrasing, also says basically that you should do everything with love, or it is worthful. Essentially, you could raise thousands for charity and do all the good works in the entire world, but if it is all done without a scrap of love then it is worth nothing to God and it is not glorifying to him.
In discussion with a friend today, we concluded that the first thing Sbout the message being preached whatever bit was because Paul was writing at a time when a lot of religiousity and 'my faith is stronger than your faith' existed. Paul was not commending the facts that people preached God through the wrong motives, but claiming that Gods word will shine change and prevail no matter how genuine or proud or otherwise the deliverer be.
Ulimately, I think that motives and intentions can really define a person. It is not so much what we do, but why we are doing it that is written on our hearts.
The most important thing is love. I truly believe that if love is your true motive, then everything else follows.
God bless
Love, Anna :)
Totally agree. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who act like being sorry about smth when they keep being evil minded. I've always tried to have a kind of inner conversation whenever I feel I have to apologise asking myself what is the reason I actually do that for???
ReplyDeletebtw, nice blog. I've started reading it quite recently and i really enjoy it xx
ReplyDeleteThank you! It's so nice to know that someone who doesn't know me personally still follows my messed-up thoughts in blog form :))) xx
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