There is greater virtue in serving total strangers, because they can’t pay you back and they give you very good feedback about the quality of your deeds, one way or the other. If you limit yourself to looking after friends and family, then we can congratulate you on having achieved the same high moral standards as organized crime! The difference between a gangster and a Christian is not in how much they provide for their friends, but how they treat their enemies. It isn’t any credit to you that you do good deeds for your friends, because even gangsters do each other favors.
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What parents complain about the excessive gratitude shown by their children? What children complain about the excessive virtue of their parents? What people seek counseling to discover how to cope with feelings of inferiority brought on by the exemplary thoughtfulness of their spouse? For within friendships and relationships, virtue is the expectation and often goes unrecognized and unrewarded. And if you are looking for a reaction in the form of gratitude, you will receive less than you desire. In fact, if your ethics are completely fleshly, you might even resent it if the reciprocation isn’t promptly forthcoming. It’s not like you are going out on a limb or putting your neck on the line, because you know the day will come when your friends will reciprocate the deed and you will be paid back. If you do good things for your friends (which of course you should do) there isn’t much payback. In fact, a total stranger may react with a degree of astonishment and gratitude that would be overdone between friends. What is that other person’s reaction? If it is a friend, the reaction is much milder than if it is a total stranger. At first they refuse the money until you explain to them that it belongs to them, that they had dropped it. You retrieve the bill and return it to them.
Hasn’t this happened to you? Suppose you are standing in line and the person in front of you drops a dollar bill without realizing it. He was the lawyer’s son, and they knew his brothers and his sister.
It was just a trick to get them to pay attention! They wouldn’t have listened to him as attentively because it was his hometown. It was a big success! Was it because I am a great speaker or some great authority? No, I am neither of those things. A minister friend of mine created a big special event once just by flying me in to preach. This is an important phenomenon that we all can observe: people tend to accord greater honor to an expert from a faraway place than they do an expert who lives among them and whom they know intimately. (In English Bibles, Judas is called Jude to distinguish him from the betrayer of the same name.) But Jesus said to them, Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor.Īs a side note, James and Judas in the above passage later became disciples and each wrote one of the New Testament epistles. Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things? And they took offense at him.
Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? they asked. The Difference Between a Gangster and a ChristianĬoming to his home town, began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. Teachings, worship, rites, sermons, and terminology
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