Throughout history there are many things that instinctively drive humans to strong reactions. The strongest of these is birth, love, jealousy and hate, death, and war or violence. In this blog post, I would like to take each one of these motivator and discuss them individually because each one motivates people in different ways and motivates different responses. With each one, there is a purpose to this motivation and God has given us the ability to take these motivators and make something beautiful. Some of these motivators are more obviously beautiful and others are hard to see how they could be turned into something beautiful.
The first of the human motivators is birth, the creation of another human being. Another human being being formed is guided by the hands of God and is one of the biggest miracles God ever created, and its a miracle that happens every day. Another human being is created, not by chance, but by God's wonderful plan and the life doesn't start a birth, but actually starts long before when a new DNA sequence is created and guided by God using the DNA from the parents. This is a motivator that is more obviously beautiful. One of the most miraculous things about birth is the way that the instincts of the mother tell her to care for her young. This is something that is not only present in humans, but in many more places in God's creation. The instincts that God created are perfect to make sure that the most vulnerable of a species is taken care of through the love of the mother.
Love is the second human motivator. First and foremost, God is love! I talked about this in a previous blog post so, I won't dwell on this point. (If you haven't read it, I highly encourage you to do so.) But without God, there is no love, because God invented love. It is an essential part of his wonderful creation and is an integral part of his flawless plan. Furthermore, sharing God is sharing love. There are two points to this. The first is that through love, we are able to bring people to Christ. The second is that when we attempt to bring people to Christ, it should be through our love for them. Jesus called us to love our neighbor as ourself. He also called us to go out and make disciples. These two commands go hand in hand. If we love someone, we should want to lead them to Christ so that they can find the hope that we have found, a hope that through Jesus, we can one day live eternally with him. Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." John 14:6-7.
There are certain things that Christians are supposed to do. One of course is praying. Another is reading and studying the Bible. These are not things that we feel we have to do. They are not things that we should do to just check off a checklist. The love that we have for God should act as a motivator for us to do what God has called us to do and motivate us to try our best to comprehend all that we can about God's plan, despite never being able to fully understand it. We should serve Christ out of our love for Christ, not in an effort to check off a checklist.
Love is very powerful and can also result in unintended consequences if one does not have the power to control their emotions. Love is such a powerful motivator, that no one can control it without the help of God. Love for things of this earth will eventually lead one to the motivator of jeaslousy. Jealousy can act as a folcrum between love and hate, making love a motivator for another motivator, hate. Jealousy driven hate is one of the most dangerous emotions as it can remove all rational thinking from a person. This emotion can drive people to violence through anger and can start wars.
Wars and violence are very sad realities of the human existance. We learn from Jesus' example at the temple, that it is okay to become angry, as long as you do not take the anger out on other people. Wars fought in anger with the sole purpose of killing those you are angry at is wrong. War has its purpose, but killing those you are angry at is not the purpose. War is ugly, and I wish that there could be no more war in the world. Unfortunately, since there are those who do not follow the Christian philosophy and because there are people attacking and killing other people, war is an inevitable reality. The Bible calls us to love our enemies as well as our allies. This means we need to show compassion to everyone we come across. Unfortunately, sometimes, the only way we can show compassion is by fighting to free those held captive in an effort to save as many lives as possible. I wish that war was able to be stopped altogether, but unfortunately, not everyone is practicing Christian morals, and are persecuting Christians, Jews, and others who they do not like and often killing them. Violence is not only possible on a large scale as in war, but can also be found on a much smaller scale, often in homes accross the world in the form of domestic violence.
I recently had the chance to rewatch the movie, "I Can Only Imagine" and if you have not yet seen it, I highly encourage you to go watch it. At the time of posting this post, the movie is available to watch for free on YouTube. The movie takes a look at the life of singer/songwriter Bart Millard, who is the lead singer of the Christian music group MercyMe, and the events that lead him to write the song, "I Can Only Imagine". It shows the damage that domestic violence can have on family relationships through the damage that the violence Bart's father inflicted on him throughout his childhood. It showed how without God, Bart's father was full of anger, and without God, he was unable to direct his anger anywhere except on his family. Bart went out on his own, with a lot of anger in his heart toward his father. In an effort to find himself, he went back to his father and found that his God got ahold of his father and had completely transformed him.
The movie used this to depict another one of the strongest motivators, death. Bart's father was motivated to change and repair his replationship with his son and with God due to a terminal diagnosis of cancer. His fear of death motivated him to make his life on earth right with what he had left of it. As Christians, we have the hope that we will one day be able to spend eternity with Christ in Heaven. But without this, the idea of death is incredibly scary mainly because it is uncertain and without Christ, our destination is unknown. Even with the hope that we have in Christ for eternal life, what happens after death is still somewhat uncertain, but what we do know is what our destination is if we love our God with all our heart, soul, and mind. It wasn't until Bart found that his father was going to die, that he was able to being the hard and bitter process of forgiving his father. God began to bring the word "Imagine" infront of Bart coming from everywhere and allowed Bart to write the song we now know as "I Can Only Imagine," which became the largest Christian music hit EVER. Facing death, even if it isn't our own, can motivate us to do amazing things through the help of Christ.
There is one huge commonality between these motivators, and that is the importance that forgiveness plays in all of them. For birth, a parents love is without end. This is shown in the movie through the way that Bart's father, despite beating him, still loved him no matter how angry he got at him. A parent is able to forgive their children with a miraculous show of love, which comes from Christ. In love, we can see that God used love as a motivation to forgive his people on earth (For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16-17) We are called to not love as the world loves, but as God has loved us. This means that we are called to forgive others around us, even when it is hard. In the case when Bart was getting the word "Imagine" brought to his mind left and right, it is easy to understand what God is trying to tell us, but its not always that easy. We have to be willing to quite our souls and find a place where we can listen for the still calm voice of God to understand what God is calling us to do. What he is calling us to do will not always be easy. Often, forgiving those around us can be made much more difficult when the things motivating us to anger are as strong as hate brought on by jealousy, war, or violence. In the movie, violence made it extemely hard for Bart to forgive his father, but since God had been calling him to forgive his father and Bart sought help from Jesus, he was eventually able to forgive him. Bart was lucky enough to have the chance to forgive his father. Many people do not have the chance to forgive people that matter to them, before its too late. Death can add motivation to forgive people. When God made human emotions, he made forgiveness essential in many motivators that humans have.