Pastor’s Corner: “God’s Perspective”
Galatians 6:9 (NLT) – 9 So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.
A five-year-old Australian girl was doing very well after a heart-lung transplant in London; but, her father was apprehended for robbing a McDonald’s restaurant to help pay for the surgery which gave the promise of new life to his little girl. “I did it for my daughter,” he said, “and I’d do it again,” he told the court. The motive was right–the method was wrong. It’s a reflection of the way we think today.
Suppose someone is driving a heart attack victim to a hospital. Naturally, they will try to drive as fast as possible. Even if they drive above the speed limit, they may be excused by the traffic police. But if they drive so fast that the car goes out of control and crashes into another vehicle, their attempts to save one life may end up endangering many lives.
“The end justifies the means” is a philosophical idea that claims that as long as the goal is good, then the steps you take to accomplish it are acceptable. Even if some of those steps are morally gray and people are harmed in the process. As Christians, this worldly idea can seep into our decision making and tempt us to compromise in what we believe.
“All a man’s ways seem innocent to him…” wrote the author of Proverbs 16:2. Then he continued, “but motives are weighed by the LORD.” That’s where God comes into the picture, and no matter what you think about something, no matter how right it looks to you or how well it fits your logic, He has the final word. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 16:25). That’s the difference between man’s wisdom and God’s wisdom.
We should not arrogantly think that we have a better plan than God. In one word, the problem is PERSPECTIVE! It reminds me of a conversation in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, where Humpty Dumpty and Alice are talking, and Humpty Dumpty says to Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I chose it to mean, neither more nor less.” But Alice responds, “The question is whether you can make words mean different things.”
If God has the final word in things, and He does, we endeavor to see life from His perspective. He looks at the genuine instead of the counterfeit. Someone asked the director of the Bank of Scotland in a conversation about counterfeiting: “do you study counterfeit money a lot so you can spot the fake.” “No,” he replied, “we instruct our people to know the real thing.”
Get God’s point of view to learn to think straight–to help you understand what really counts–what lasts in an artificial world. Where do you get God’s perspective? Not by reading the newspaper or checking out the astrological forecasts. There is one book which gives God’s point of view. It is His Book, THE BIBLE. As strange as it seems to some, the Bible makes sense. It has a divine wisdom that goes far beyond the superficial veneer of life today. At times, it painfully cuts across the trends of our day and convicts us of our shallowness and sinfulness. But there is one thing for sure–since He has the last word, we had better learn how He views life. The way which seems right to a man and which also leads to death is a marked contrast from the way to God. It’s worth learning about.
In His Grace,
Pastor Hamilton