Lots of folks think they are good people. They are very "spiritual". I once spoke to a fellow in the grocery store, when I was handing out Gideon's Bibles, spreading the Word more like a used-car salesman more than anything else. I asked the fellow the tried and tested, "Do you know where you will go after you die?" and the obligatory, "Do you know Jesus Christ?" Something like that.
The fellow stuttered to me, sounding almost ashamed, "I am spiritual. I am a very spiritual person,"
I said to him, "Oh yeah? In what way?"
He told me, "I jog every day. I walk my dog..." I think he was trying to say that he meditated. I dropped a Bible into his shopping cart. I pray he read it or will read it some time.
No doubt, if you are a Laodicean, you will think you are "good people". Although there is no distinction between your lifestyle and the lifestyle of an unbeliever, you are good deep down inside. But what about a legitimately good person? How would you distinguish him from a faithful Christian, one after God's own heart? This question was posed during my men's Bible study group. A good question. We pondered the response. Several responses were made. But today I will write of another response.
*Note: we speak of differences not in terms of salvation, but in terms of conduct and being salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13)
I am reading a book by one such good, yet pagan man. His name is Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero writes the book, De Officiis (Latin for, On Duties) for his son, Cicero the Minor. Being good costed him his life in the draconian political arena. He was a political opponent of Julius Cesar, since he was a defender of the failing Roman Republic's ideals. He opposed Julius Cesar's populist tyranny. He was later executed by one of the Second Triumvirate, Mark Antony.
In it he writes of morality, advantage, and when morality and advantage conflict. The overarching theme of the book is that expediency, if immoral, must never been seen as expediency. On Duties was a popular book with the early church fathers and vigorously preserved, printed and taught because of its agreeableness with Biblical teachings. I wonder what Cicero would say and do if he were living by the time of Christ's life.
One of the subjects he writes on is glory and honor. To summarize, glory and honour are useful tools in going far in life. It is a means to make meaningful friendships. The essence of perfect glory, he writes, is goodwill, trust and admiration. Goodwill is attained by charity and good performance of regular duties, say at work, for example. Trust (or loyalty) is acquired through justice and wisdom, where Justice is better than wisdom, because justice has authority even without prudence. However, wisdom without justice is crafty and deceitful. The way to admiration (or respect) is worth rather than morality. Worth as in work ethic, industry, foresight. He states that a worthless person is less respected than a bad person. In reading this, we gain understanding on the nature of glory. Thank you Cicero, for your insights on glory.
Now we differentiate the good man and the godly man. It is simple. The good man keeps glory to himself. He may exhibit his glory, or he may hide it in humbleness. All in all, whether his glory be in secret or in public, he is meager with it and it is his to keep. This shall be his reward (Matthew 6:5, Matthew 7:22). A godly man does not keep his glory to himself. The godly man gives his glory to God and God alone (Colossians 3:17, Matthew 5:16, Psalms 115:1, 1 Corinthians 10:31)
Think of it this way, a rich man may publicly display his wealth, or he may try to drive his Ferrari on quiet roads to maintain a low profile. But a low profile is not a useful humility.
Say an unassuming and unremarkable man does a great thing. He saves a bus load of kids from say, drowning in a river. If during an interview, the reporter praises him for his heroics, and he responds by saying, "Oh, I'm not that great,"
The reporter replies, "Oh, you're so humble and down to earth," Not only does he retain the glory of the things he had done, but he accumulates more from his humility.
If instead the man says, "I could not have done these things without God. It was all God," Then people will pause and ask questions. From this begins the planting of seeds. It is why songs like John Newton's Amazing Grace are so powerful. They attribute good things done by broken people to a God who overcomes the brokenness and does the impossible (Mark 10:27). Now if when you give glory to God, you feeling as though you were impotently giving credit to a quiet, uninteresting friend, worry not. If five people said the same thing about the same quiet friend, people would be inclined to listen. If the Lord does great things through many people (John 14:12), and giving him his due, the word will spread.
Now the difference between a good man and a godly man can be like the difference between Saul and David. If you read 1 and 2 Samuel, you see the contrast between Saul and David. Saul disobeys God twice and tries to do things his own way, for his own glory. David, however has done things arguably morally worse than Saul, but he always gives God the glory, and was repentant and humble before God. In doing so he is justified (Romans 4:6-8). The good things a good man does can make him some friends and gain him popularity, but they can never hold the power of the mighty things of God who works through those who humble themselves before Him.
This has always been one of my favourite bible verses:
Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labour in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchmen stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives his beloved sleep.
Psalms 127:1-2
Don't just try to be a good person. Give God the glory when you have an opportunity to do good.
Friday, November 25, 2016
Sunday, November 13, 2016
"Rage-quitting" your treasures on earth
I recently spent (or rather, wasted) two hours of my life on a computer game. Granted it was with my cousin over in Montreal, and I do this to commune with him. It is one of my favourites and it is called Elite Dangerous. The premise of the game is flying a space ship around a full-sized galaxy. The developers weren't kidding about the full-sized galaxy part. The game world contains billions upon billions of stars, waiting to be explored by players around the world. There are suns of different classes, planets of all make and sizes, black holes, quasars, white dwarfs, you name it. There are hundreds to thousands of space stations and colonies sprawled through human space (there are no aliens) in a bubble around earth. You can even visit our own solar system. It is pretty remarkable. Considering that there is faster-than-light travel, where your ship can go at several thousand times the speed of light, it takes about one month of dedicated flying to travel from earth to the center of the galaxy. Wow.
There is an assortment of "careers" that one can take, whether it be mining, trading, bounty-hunting, exploring or even pirating and smuggling (drugs and slaves). The legitimate jobs are as tedious as real-life jobs, but the sinful jobs are exhilarating. As you accumulate money in your career, you gain the ability to afford bigger, better ships with assorted bells and whistles. But pray you have enough money to pay for ship insurance to cover the expense of your ship when you explode. And explode you will, when are unexpectedly mugged by space pirates, crash into asteroids, or get blasted to pieces by the fuzz because you can't park. It is unwise to spend all of your money on one ship. There is much thrill and reward in the visceral risk. But the mundane repetition and unforgiving learning curve can be unfulfilling to many. Gamers call this, "grinding".
Today I chose to play as a bounty hunter. I had made around a million in-game dollars worth of "kills". The cost of replacing my ship was also one million. Before I could cash in my earnings, my ship unceremoniously exploded. I was sentenced to death by cop. Naturally I was outraged. It was not because I had lost, since I knew I was no ace, but because I had spent two hours of my life incurring but a net loss. So I quit the game for a while. Gamers refer to this as, "rage-quitting,"
This is amusing because in retrospect, had I survived to cash cash in my pay-cheque, I would gain nothing but temporary gratification. I could never bring my achievement or money back into the real world. My time was lost for good. Had I won, I would never have noticed this. Such is the spoils of the modern-age matrix of instant gratification. In the case of Elite Dangerous, it may be more sadomasochism.
I am reminded of a fellow who told me that video games were a waste of time and amounted to no good, after I had tried to convince him to join my phone app game company. He is a gifted programmer. He told me how he had wasted countless hours on Diablo as a youth, on what he described as, "numbing his mind to mindless killing".
I am also reminded of my friend who buys digital items on this virtual marketplace called Steam in order to sell them at exorbitant prices to mainland Chinese and South Koreans. He buys them at about twenty dollars a pop and then sells them for hundreds when demand gets high. We are talking fashion accessories for video game characters. Come to think of it, the entire phone game industry is very much dependent on in-app purchases for profitability. I often express to him my distress at the inanity of the way his customers spend their fortunes. Naturally I receive much rationalization. Video games were compared to music, books, movies, TV sports, and other forms of entertainment. The logical conclusion is that all things are meaningless (Ecclesiastes 1:1, hah!). But you know what? He is correct. Many things are meaningless.
We often scoff at the idea of people wasting real money on games and things within games. They appear to be trapped in a dream. The game itself will become outdated, and the next game will come, with better graphics and requiring better hardware. Your old game will be forgotten, and your last Nintendo box will be crushed and recycled for its precious metals. Yet we cling so tightly to our worldly possessions and to our very lives, which are in the scheme of things no longer in duration and no greater in durability. We cannot bring our wealth with us into Heaven. Perhaps we have grown so accustomed to wealth and success that we have forgotten the futility of it all, just like when we succeed in playing a fun video game.
Jesus admonishes us in Matthew 6:19-21, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do no break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also," Will we see the futility in our worldly treasure in the same way we see the futility of digital achievements? Or will we try to rationalize away our worldliness?
There is an assortment of "careers" that one can take, whether it be mining, trading, bounty-hunting, exploring or even pirating and smuggling (drugs and slaves). The legitimate jobs are as tedious as real-life jobs, but the sinful jobs are exhilarating. As you accumulate money in your career, you gain the ability to afford bigger, better ships with assorted bells and whistles. But pray you have enough money to pay for ship insurance to cover the expense of your ship when you explode. And explode you will, when are unexpectedly mugged by space pirates, crash into asteroids, or get blasted to pieces by the fuzz because you can't park. It is unwise to spend all of your money on one ship. There is much thrill and reward in the visceral risk. But the mundane repetition and unforgiving learning curve can be unfulfilling to many. Gamers call this, "grinding".
Today I chose to play as a bounty hunter. I had made around a million in-game dollars worth of "kills". The cost of replacing my ship was also one million. Before I could cash in my earnings, my ship unceremoniously exploded. I was sentenced to death by cop. Naturally I was outraged. It was not because I had lost, since I knew I was no ace, but because I had spent two hours of my life incurring but a net loss. So I quit the game for a while. Gamers refer to this as, "rage-quitting,"
This is amusing because in retrospect, had I survived to cash cash in my pay-cheque, I would gain nothing but temporary gratification. I could never bring my achievement or money back into the real world. My time was lost for good. Had I won, I would never have noticed this. Such is the spoils of the modern-age matrix of instant gratification. In the case of Elite Dangerous, it may be more sadomasochism.
I am reminded of a fellow who told me that video games were a waste of time and amounted to no good, after I had tried to convince him to join my phone app game company. He is a gifted programmer. He told me how he had wasted countless hours on Diablo as a youth, on what he described as, "numbing his mind to mindless killing".
I am also reminded of my friend who buys digital items on this virtual marketplace called Steam in order to sell them at exorbitant prices to mainland Chinese and South Koreans. He buys them at about twenty dollars a pop and then sells them for hundreds when demand gets high. We are talking fashion accessories for video game characters. Come to think of it, the entire phone game industry is very much dependent on in-app purchases for profitability. I often express to him my distress at the inanity of the way his customers spend their fortunes. Naturally I receive much rationalization. Video games were compared to music, books, movies, TV sports, and other forms of entertainment. The logical conclusion is that all things are meaningless (Ecclesiastes 1:1, hah!). But you know what? He is correct. Many things are meaningless.
We often scoff at the idea of people wasting real money on games and things within games. They appear to be trapped in a dream. The game itself will become outdated, and the next game will come, with better graphics and requiring better hardware. Your old game will be forgotten, and your last Nintendo box will be crushed and recycled for its precious metals. Yet we cling so tightly to our worldly possessions and to our very lives, which are in the scheme of things no longer in duration and no greater in durability. We cannot bring our wealth with us into Heaven. Perhaps we have grown so accustomed to wealth and success that we have forgotten the futility of it all, just like when we succeed in playing a fun video game.
Jesus admonishes us in Matthew 6:19-21, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do no break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also," Will we see the futility in our worldly treasure in the same way we see the futility of digital achievements? Or will we try to rationalize away our worldliness?
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