May 5, 2014
Dear Liberty,
There are millions of people in this world who wish to change the world. They all want to feed the hungry. They all desire to help the poor. They all stand-up for women and children who are abused. They all want to respect the earth. And they all are truly sincere about those causes. The problem is they usually fall into one of two ideologies that unfortunately are in complete opposition to each other.
Both change the world, but not quite in the same way. The first gives the individual the power to make change while the second forcibly tries to make the change for the collective, and thus, gives an elite group power. The first gives individuals liberties and the second takes them away. One holds individuals responsible for themselves while the other takes all responsibility, and freedom, away from the individual. One allows individuals to freely give, help, and touch people’s lives for both now and in eternity while the other just takes from individuals and the help just barely affects another’s daily struggles. For the first, change takes place constantly but is often more felt internally for both the giver and receiver than externally. To the latter, change usually needs to been seen externally for confirmation that any good was even done. More importantly, since the change was usually the result of an elite group forcibly taking the gift and distributing it to the receivers, the chance for any love, respect, or true personal change is denied the opportunity to even be allowed to occur.
It boils down to the all inclusive statement of we want to “save the world”. What does that mean? To the Christian, to save someone means their soul will be in heaven for eternity. To the non-Christian, to save someone means the time here on earth will be more bearable. In a society where we have developed an “instant results” mentality, it is easy to be enticed and nowadays quite frankly bullied, into pushing for the oh so desired utopia here on Earth. Liberty, it doesn’t exist. If it did, why are multi-million dollar actors overdosing on drugs while others are perfectly happy without even a TV?
Liberty, you will be seduced by your friends, by your co-workers, by politicians and by society as a whole to fall into the latter school of thought. But you need to ask yourself what good is just saving someone’s present when their eternity will be lost in hell? Are we suppose to show compassion for the hungry and the poor? Absolutely. But if we follow Christ and understand what his life, death and resurrection really mean, our hearts can do nothing else but love our neighbors as ourselves. We won’t need some bureaucrat in Washington telling us they are going to take more of our money to give to someone else. We the people, through our churches and synagogues, will be doing that.
Before acting, make sure to ask yourself, are you doing it because either you want something in return or you are being forced/bullied into doing it, or are you taking action because Christ sacrificed everything for you and the Holy Spirit has filled you with the desire to share His love with others?
That’s my 2 cents.
Love,
Mom
CHANGE THE WORLD
