3 John 11 Dear friends, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.
With the attack at a Christmas Parade this past week, those who believe that people are good have a much greater hurdle to jump to convince the world of their belief. Even the “few bad apples” theory seems to be falling from the tree as the flash looting is spreading to different cities. When I hear people spouting things like this, I want to ask, “Have you ever met people?”
The reality is that we all have the ability to make choices, and often that ability leads to selfish or shortsighted decisions. But I find another alarming trend these days. I see a lack of behavior being modeled by those in leadership.
The icons of our society are now not people of especially high moral character. Instead, they are the high rollers, the ‘play the field’ kind of people. They so often reach for the basest inclinations of humanity and fuel these flames.
The Colin Powells and Condoleezza Rices of the world are ignored. Those who stand up for reason and with intelligence are silenced. Instead, we amplify the Greta Thunberg and Cardi B. And the traditional media and social media contribute to this mayhem.
Our text tells us that we have the ability to imitate other people, either their good deeds or their evil deeds. We get to choose and we are responsible for our choices. We can’t blame our society or our parents for our choices. Our choices are our choices.
As followers of Jesus, we have a duty to both follow the good examples, but also be a good example. The Scriptures give us enough crystal clear guidance on what good behavior looks like, that if we are sincere about our walk of faith, then there is plenty of guidance available for us to follow. Our problem is not that we don’t have enough knowledge of what to do, but with our willingness to do what we know.
You see, what we do tells others about what we really believe. What we really believe is not what we say, but what we do. Our actions speak louder than our words. We can talk about the reality of eternity all we want, but if our life is focused on the here and now, eternity becomes secondary in our actions.
If the LORD is really who He says He is, as presented in the Scriptures, then we need to live differently than those who don’t profess Him. Our lives need to look “good.” They need to be “good.”
But so often we seem to be a mixed bag of good and evil.
I think the goal of the Spirit’s work in our lives is one that can be seen best over time. The process of cleaning us up happens over a lifetime. The proof in the pudding is often seen not in the initial transformation, but in the changes, small and large, that take hold and get walked out over months and years.
We need to imitate the highest ideals and realities of the Gospel. We have a cloud of witnesses to whom we can look for examples. We can become examples for those who follow after us.
The Arnold Journey 