Motivation

Today, I attended the five-hour lecture prior to the Highway Code test. Yes, I am finally beginning my foray into the realm of four-wheeled vehicular piloting: driving.

As I flipped through the pages on offences and penalties, demerits et cetera, I couldn't help but think of 'crime and punishment' in the context of religion.

Why is it that so much of the motivation for obeying comes from fear of being punished? "Do this and that, or else..." Those ominous words lend their haunting presence to almost every religious code of conduct, regardless of culture and philosophy.

Even the pitch of much evangelism seems to spring out of this: "Repent and believe or you're going to hell!"

It's as though we're to obey God, to surrender to a Force beyond us, simply for fear that something untoward may happen. And then, when someone does something wrong and gets away, the whole system seems to be unreliable. What next? There comes a state of spiritual anarchy, because we can do anything we want and not get punished.

But then the entire point is missed. Why is there so little motivation to do what's good for the sole reason that it is good? Have we lost all capacity for transcendence, to be simply because there is no other way that is worth it?

I keep thinking of how Jesus taught. There were virtually no "or else" pitches about, and yet the message drew more hearers then, from more diverse societal strata, than anything before or anything after. Simply because they saw something real, something good, that could not be denied.

It sometimes pains me to say this, but Christianity today has lost that inherent goodness that characterized the ministry of Christ. Why are we wearing his name if we're content to preach prosperity gospels, escape-from-hell gospels, 'forgiven-but-not-perfect' gospels and heaven-after-earth gospels?

We've so watered down his message and denied the reality of God's kingdom here and now, that it's no wonder there is so little capacity to be truly good for its sake, in the midst of the church (and society) by and large. There's always some ulterior motive somewhere.

Yet we're made in the image of God. Doesn't that say something? I hear a call, to be something more than what this world understands. To be more than what we think we know; to be, because God is.