Coffee with The Pastor - BE On Guard...Envy and Selfishness

What You Celebrate, You Duplicate!

Wow!!!  I normally skip Posting on weekends, but during my reading this morning, I was floored with the TRUTH of who we are (some of us) as a people, society and a nation.

The Problem: Many have become a people who are only concerned with SELF-image.  We covet, crave or even desire what others have, how they are living their lives or the success that they have achieved.  We celebrate their lifestyles (no matter how illicit, illegal or even ill-advised), we celebrate their defiance to order, law and rule; and we tend to even celebrate destructive behavior.  How you may ask?  You may think that this rant is over the top, but look at what we watch on the television.  Look at the reality shows.  Look at the addictions and exploitation of our celebrities in Sports, on the Big Screen and in the Music Industry.  Again, how are we taking part in this?  We tattoo ourselves with images and words spoken or sung by such persons…”THUG LIFE”, “Hustler”, ”YOLO”, “The World is Mine”, etc.  We purchase their merchandise, albums (CDs) and attend their concerts.  We subscribe to pay television channels which exploits violence, nudity and profanity.  We subscribe to Chat rooms and websites that exploit women and children and fuels the finances of Human Trafficking.  Many of these things that we support doesn't appear to directly damage us or confuse our true identity, but if continued it will consume us and utterly destroy us!

I find it almost laughable, if it weren't so incredibly sad and destructive, that as a culture we celebrate selfishness and then seem confused when there is a lack of self-less-ness in our culture.  Well, what did you expect? If our children’s hero is filled with envy and selfish ambition, then do we really expect that we are encouraging good behavior within our children?  No. Like with everything else, what you celebrate, you duplicate.  So when we celebrate envy and selfish ambition, we duplicate envy and selfish ambition.  Once the entire culture is driven by its own envy and selfish ambition, then the only possible outcome is “disorder and every evil practice”.

What can we do? Let me encourage you to do two things:

1. Be a person of self-less service.
2. Celebrate people of self-less service.

What we celebrate…we can duplicate!

“For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice” (James 3:16)