My continiung ambiguities about motive
The following is a conversation on facebook sometime last week:
person 1: drove from 430pm & arrived home from vavuniya @1115pm to discover someone has parked their car in the middle of the road blocking my access to my house!!! not happy at all.:( but not mad either. :) i parked behind them & left a note! they will wake me in the early hours of the morning 2move my vehicle so they could move theirs! i will NOT shout at them ;) i hope they learn never to do it again!
Person 2
well said machang. how can u share Christ after chewing someones head off...Ha?
Person 1
... exactly...i must demonstrate the love i am talking about! what a different place this would be if only we did that better?
My comments:
hmm....now I had to really restrain myself from commenting on this. Hard to have an honest discussion when at least one of the people are completely unknown to you. This is the thing with the internet, we get to sit in on conversations we would not have otherwise heard. But at the same time, we don't have the chance to have a look at the people who are talking. We can't gauge body language, we can't gauge social structure, lots of stuff like that.
It's pretty easy to get terribly, terribly honest, and say exactly what's on your mind. This is one thing that's so scary about facebook. So many of the wall posts are so provacative, it's frustrating not so shout out and say your piece for all the world to hear.
Now to my comments on the actual content of the above conversation.
Why does honestness to someone preclude them from knowing God's love?
Could not person one still say, even a bit angrily, you should not park your car here, it is inconvenient? He could have explained the situation - i.e. he had been driving since 4 am, and the last thing would be have to again wake up in the early hours to repark it.
He's a nice guy, and a gentleman. But using the fact that he was not going to tell the guy off, owing to having to tell that person about God's love seems a bit off to me. It also seems corrupt in a way. Meaning he did not restrain his anger because of altruistic reasons, but because it was an opportunity to bring that person into his religion. He's mad inside as well, which makes it somewhat hypocritical. Mad to the extent of telling his 524 friends on facebook about it, but not the person in question. Which also earns him brownie points in a way.
So I guess what I am trying to say I guess is that, if person one was restraining his anger as an example to the offender, of God to the offender, this is not really the way to go about it.
I guess for me, a demonstration of God's love needs to be purely altruistic. For one, it would not earn us metaphorical points by the 524 people who hear about it. Two, we do it, not planning on following it up with a God talk. Three, not showing anger is not an example of God.
person 1: drove from 430pm & arrived home from vavuniya @1115pm to discover someone has parked their car in the middle of the road blocking my access to my house!!! not happy at all.:( but not mad either. :) i parked behind them & left a note! they will wake me in the early hours of the morning 2move my vehicle so they could move theirs! i will NOT shout at them ;) i hope they learn never to do it again!
Person 2
well said machang. how can u share Christ after chewing someones head off...Ha?
Person 1
... exactly...i must demonstrate the love i am talking about! what a different place this would be if only we did that better?
My comments:
hmm....now I had to really restrain myself from commenting on this. Hard to have an honest discussion when at least one of the people are completely unknown to you. This is the thing with the internet, we get to sit in on conversations we would not have otherwise heard. But at the same time, we don't have the chance to have a look at the people who are talking. We can't gauge body language, we can't gauge social structure, lots of stuff like that.
It's pretty easy to get terribly, terribly honest, and say exactly what's on your mind. This is one thing that's so scary about facebook. So many of the wall posts are so provacative, it's frustrating not so shout out and say your piece for all the world to hear.
Now to my comments on the actual content of the above conversation.
Why does honestness to someone preclude them from knowing God's love?
Could not person one still say, even a bit angrily, you should not park your car here, it is inconvenient? He could have explained the situation - i.e. he had been driving since 4 am, and the last thing would be have to again wake up in the early hours to repark it.
He's a nice guy, and a gentleman. But using the fact that he was not going to tell the guy off, owing to having to tell that person about God's love seems a bit off to me. It also seems corrupt in a way. Meaning he did not restrain his anger because of altruistic reasons, but because it was an opportunity to bring that person into his religion. He's mad inside as well, which makes it somewhat hypocritical. Mad to the extent of telling his 524 friends on facebook about it, but not the person in question. Which also earns him brownie points in a way.
So I guess what I am trying to say I guess is that, if person one was restraining his anger as an example to the offender, of God to the offender, this is not really the way to go about it.
I guess for me, a demonstration of God's love needs to be purely altruistic. For one, it would not earn us metaphorical points by the 524 people who hear about it. Two, we do it, not planning on following it up with a God talk. Three, not showing anger is not an example of God.
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