Ok everyone, this is a topic that could extend into all kinds of societal trends and political ideas, like supremacy, and other church problems. But I am sticking with the core of the matter which has to do with a challenge of doing everything you can for God and other people while participating in a society that involves interdependence and dependence. What I am saying is that giving all you can give can sometimes also overlap with greed, of getting all you can get, and to maintain any unselfish goals requires caution about how much other people might be exploited in even the most innocent processes of “doing everything you can.” In other words, whenever we try to max out our own potential with the purest of motives, we still are usually functioning in a multi-resource system that incorporates other people’s efforts. So as producers it is likely we are also simultaneously consumers in some way.
That is where this can be a whole book but what I am saying is that whole communities and cultures should be coordinating together for highest ends if they really want to please God, and individuals who have that goal on their own must figure out how much they can achieve their own righteous endeavors without crunching those who are leveraged into contributing without their own goals being satisfied. Well this is where bad people might have an opportunity to see how they can clog the system or create a blackmail effect that slows down well-meaning people. That is definitely a sad thing that many will no doubt get caught for by the auditors of heaven. Matthew Henry in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew said the conscience is an auditor, so maybe the people who ruin things for everyone already know that about themselves. But what I am saying is that when we have a feeling that nothing we do is good enough and we keep trying to please whoever we try to please anyway, there could be other people getting crunched in that machine as well.
The most simple example is giving money to charity. Well that is so nice, but doesn’t it mean getting a paycheck, and is that maxed out at any cost? Well if you are doing good things to earn it, then all it does is multiply the goodness. And yet we know that some people don’t do right. So during the “Get what you can get” phase, which usually does precede the give what you can give phase, is there someone else’s utmost that you are spending, and are they okay with that? Maybe they should be and deserve some misery if they can’t get with the program. Or maybe almost everyone has underestimated the power of working together for one good Cause.
