Politics, sex, and religion -- the topics we don't discuss at, say, a Thanksgiving Day gathering or the like. Funny thing. When those topics are discussed (approved or unapproved), it seems like it's always deeds and not attitudes. "Did you hear what he did this week?" "How can those people do that?" Sometimes -- less often -- we might venture a step deeper with "What were they thinking??" But in our current culture, actions and attitudes are distinct. You can address actions; you must leave off ... nay ... encourage attitudes. You need to affirm what other people feel. So we're left with responding primarily to behavior and leaving motives and attitudes alone.
I would hope that every Christian would see the problem with that. Jesus said, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matt 12:34). Jesus said, "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander" (Matt 15:18-19). Jesus said, "The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45). The repeated message from Scripture is that the problem is not our choice of actions, but our deceitful and desperately sick hearts (Jer 17:9).
The problems we see are clear on the surface -- murders, sexual immorality, hate, despicable deeds. They're all over the news on a daily basis. But those are just symptoms, problems that laws and crime prevention can only minimally affect. These deeds are not the real problem. The real problem is heart disease. Human beings are not fundamentally good (Rom 3:12). So all our righteous indignation about the bad things "those people" are doing is misspent. What they -- what we all -- need is Jesus. What we all need is death and resurrection; new life. We only find that in death to self by faith in Christ. We must be born again.
2 comments:
It's pretty clear that God looks at our motives over our deeds, otherwise He'd not said that even our good works are as filthy rags. The only way doing good things, things that His Law would approve, can be considered filthy rags is if their motivation wasn't His glory. Anything we do, good or bad, that isn't done with the intent of glorifying God, is evil.
A post about the unregenerate heart is a fitting one for Black Friday. I wasn’t a part of a large holiday dinner conversation yesterday, but if so, I would have really hoped to see the discussion get beyond mundane topics to include important talk about spiritual things--i.e. our desperate need for God and to be born again. This post has prompted me to make a mental note to pray specifically before Thanksgiving each year that God will use any upcoming family gatherings as an opportunity for such important talk. Perhaps your post for next Thanksgiving Day Eve could include an encouragement to your readers to pray that way (holding a mental note for a year is really pushing it for me :).
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