MOTIVES

Even when we do the right thing, we need to do it for right reason. Perhaps nothing is weighed like our attitudes and motives. For example, if we go to church because it makes good business sense, is socially pleasing, or to make ourselves look reputable we are displaying wrong motives for going to church. If our primary purpose for going to church doesn’t include learning to love God more, then we ought to reexamine our purpose. Just going to church to learn more about God is fine, but somewhere we have to seek to know God. As we’ve said, knowing all about God is not the same as knowing God.

Memorizing Scripture verses and church doctrine is where we need to look at our motives as well. We can memorize verses to seem religious and impress others. Or, we can memorize them to help us in our journey and offer them to others when they are in need.

There is a lot of religion in today’s world and a decrease in faith. A just published study says that young people don’t really contemplate right and wrong except for rape and murder. Nearly everything else is considered a “personal matter.” A prevalent but disconcerting view is, “I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel.” As the author concluded, “Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.”

Because we want to seem politically correct and not seem judgmental, we are losing our moral basis. We are allowing our moral motives to be replaced by secular ways. Yet, the motives of our heart determine who we are… yes, even more than our actions do.