Posts Tagged: kindness to others

“MOTIVATIONS, DO WE REALLY KNOW WHY WE DO THINGS?”

On March 7, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“People may be pure in their own eyes, but the LORD examines their motives.” (Proverbs 16:2, New Living Translation)

I suspect that the second half of this verse tends to negate the first half.  No, I am not saying that this proverb contradicts itself.  What I am saying is that I think that the Lord’s examination of our/my motives tends to call into question our purity.  Note also the words “in their own eyes.”  This is a phrase that often raises serious questions about the accuracy of our perception.

Do we really know why we do things?  I doubt it.  I have doubted it for a long time.

When I was a pastor, I noticed that the reasons people gave me for leaving the church I was serving almost never coincided with the reasons they gave to other people.

Now, of course it is possible that people were simply too cowardly (or too polite?) to give me their real reasons.  However, it may well be that they didn’t really know their reasons, or that their reasons were changing as they went along.

Of course, my own motivations for moving from one church to another were always pure—or not!  (Years ago, I read or heard someone say, “Why is it that a pastor never feels ‘the leading of the Holy Spirit’ to go to a church that pays less than the church he’s serving now?”  That’s not always true, but it’s a good question, nonetheless.)

I was thinking about this matter of motives when a TED talk landed in my e mail in box.  A Swedish researcher was talking about motivation.  I need to listen to it again, but his final conclusions were pretty straightforward.  Since his final words confirmed what I already suspected (both from Scripture and experience), I thought his words were very insightful.

“Know that you don’t know yourself!

(Or at least not as well as you think you do.)”

So, if we can’t be too sure about our motivations and the choices that we think flow from them, what are we to do?

First of all, we can be more humble about our own self-lack-of-knowledge.  Knowing that I don’t know myself may not be a very satisfying type of knowledge, but it may be a very healthy kind of knowledge.

Second, we can cut other people some slack about their own motivation.  If I don’t even know much about my own motivation, what right do I have to think I know someone else’s motivation?

Humility about ourselves often leads to kindness toward others.

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