Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on
March 6, 2015, as Motivation Makes All The Difference.
"The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self- denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire."
~from The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis
Motives matter. My motives matter to me and effect me. There are some things that I do that no one but God could ever guess my true motivation, and I may not even know it unless I am willing to look honestly at the depths of my heart and ask myself that all important question of why? Motives matter because walking with God is a condition of the heart, and He desires relationship and response to Him and His call out of love rather than grudging obedience out of fear. But motives also matter because the right motive makes service easier.
I am a somewhat lazy man. I don't like increasing my work load for no reason; I am a firm believer in the adage work smarter not harder. When I helped my father haul hay for a living I learned things about lifting in such a way as to make the shape and weight of the hay help rather than hinder moving it (understanding physics is not a total waste after all) and learned from my father to think first and move second so you don't have to pick that bale of hay up one more time than is absolutely necessary. There is some virtue to this type of thinking, but it can also lead to non-virtuous behavior. In my case, I never understood the point of making my bed. What a waste of time. No one was going to see it anyway. If someone knew me well enough to get to see my bedroom, then should whether or not I make up my bed really matter? After all, I'm just going to mess it up when I lay back down, right?
So I never made up my bed of my own volition. This caused me problems for a while in prison. I remember a period of nearly week where morning after morning I went toe to toe with an officer who came by and tried to make me make up my bed while I refused. The rules and not getting in trouble just weren't motivation enough to make me do it, and the more pressure came to bear the more a part of me wanted to get stiff necked and say "you can't make me." Let's face it, without some rebellion I never would've lived a life that led to prison in the first place, right? After a while I made up the bed because it was easier than the fight, but I resented it. I hated doing it. I did it to escape consequences, and therefore whenever the opportunity came to blow it, off that's exactly what I did. I never made my bed unless I had to.
Fast forward to a couple of years after my release. I married Leah and learned something about her. I don't know why (I don't need to understand why), but it makes her happy for the bed to be made. I learned that little fact and began making the bed. Not because she nagged me to or asked me to or because anyone made me. It doesn't upset me or make me angry. I don't feel imposed upon. You see, I love her so much, and I love to see her smile. And I don't know why, but I do know that it makes her smile when I make the bed.
It's selfishness that makes me hate to make the bed. It's selfishness that makes me make the bed. Really, it is selfishness either way. I love that smile, and making the bed is such a little thing to exchange for such a great reward. Love makes it easy. Love makes it enjoyable to do something I once fought to the point of being sent to seg to avoid doing. The cure for selfishness is not unselfishness. C.S. Lewis is right. It's love. Love is still selfish, but the fruit is wonderful rather than miserable. If walking with God didn't give me freedom and a life worth living, if relationship with God didn't have more and greater rewards of joy and peace than anything else I had tried I would keep looking for something else. But relationship with Him is worth living for. It is worth dying for. It is worth choosing what makes Him smile over what I prefer, the easier, more pleasurable to my old nature, choice. When the motive is love for God and love for others, we can sacrifice our own needs and desires easily, for something we need and desire even more. But when we're motivated by "have to" and doing without instead of doing for someone else, then the same act of self-denial becomes a painful chore that brings only bitterness and resentment.
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