Wednesday, June 13, 2007

...And my city was gone

I got a ride at about 11:50 with Ivan Angelov. He's Bulgarian and he's taking me to Dayton. I don't know exactly where yet, but anywhere will be fine. I guess I should look at a map to find out what exit might be good for me.<p>We just stopped for lunch in Corbin, KY. I'm hoping to be in Dayton by about 6:00.<p>Forget what I said last night about WWJD. Don't do something nice for someone just because you think Jesus would do it. And don't do something nice for someone just because I told you to. That would be insincere.<p>Instead, do something nice for someone out of the kindness of your heart. Do something nice for someone because you sincerely want to make the world a better place, at least for one person at one moment in time. It might just make the whole world a better place for everyone, at every moment in time. Do something nice for someone because it makes you feel good.

2 comments:

revolution said...

ok. now i'm going to start in on you. you should know by now that i have a sense of humor and that i'm not one of those religious pricks.

That said, I'm going to drop some "word" on you, if you don't mind.

God says that the heart is increasingly deceitful and wicked.

So doing something kind for your neighbor because that's what Jesus would have done is actually a correct motivation to have for such an act.

Face it, you're hitching through a culture that has spent a couple centuries cheapening the "person of Jesus."

I recently read a quote attributed to Richard Gere, who might be recognized as the second most famous Buddhist in the world next to the Dali Lama. He said, “I keep having this image that Jesus Christ is here and now. He’s here among us. And he’s just quietly watching what’s going on in his name and he’s appalled.”

We can debate Gere’s “image” of Jesus but can we discount the relevant observation that the Christ-following community, also known as the Church, might be verbalizing the Gospel to people but that we are falling incredibly short in living out the Gospel in terms of being there for the underbelly of society?

docrivs said...

I see nothing wrong in choosing a role model to base your life around. There are FAR worse role models than the archetypal Jesus figure. If someone does good "in Jesus' name" and acts in that way out of a sincere desire to soak up the good parts of the Jesus character, then I think that is a good thing. It is the INsincere people who irritate and disgust, because they only want to give the impression that they think of Jesus as a role model. They actually are just PR people. I liked what you wrote, Lew.