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Noisy Gongs

             If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (I Corinthians 13:1-3)

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. (Matthew 6:2)

The I Corinthians passage was the verse of the day online, and my thoughts went in three directions. The first is the subject of virtue signaling. We see a lot of it in the world. After Mr. Trump was elected, there were people who wore safety pins on their clothing, to announce to the universe that they were “safe” to talk to. I’ve also encountered writers who have to include every possible culture, skin color, sexual orientation, etc. in their stories to show how devoted to diversity they are.  There are also folks who seem to have to share the “if you’re not ashamed of Christ” memes, to prove how good a Christian they are. It’s one of those human nature things. We all do it sometimes, but some folks do it a lot.

The second direction my mind goes is to the fact that for many years, I refused to wear a cross or put a fish symbol on my car because if my behavior wasn’t perfect, I’d embarrass or disgrace God. He confronted me about my thinking He was so pitiful that He couldn’t survive my embarrassing Him.

The third direction is my seeming inability to not tell people what I’m doing. I say I’d rather be invisible or do things at night, so people won’t know (not possible) but then I tell people who don’t know and have nothing to do with it. Sometimes it’s to give people ideas or “raise awareness” – or so I claim (even to myself.) But is it?

What other people are doing is really between them and God, but at the same time, is it loving of us to condemn them to the clanging gong or to the temporal treasure? If we are not to teach one another this principle, why is it included in Scripture? If we care about others, we do need to teach this, but first, we need to teach it to ourselves. That means we need to take the things we are doing to God and ask Him to reveal our motives to us, or to ask Him to convict us whenever we move into the clanging gong or temporal reward zones and keep in mind that it’s also possible that God will call on us to be a noisy gong if that suits his purposes. After all, a noisy gong is pretty good at calling people to dinner or letting everyone know there’s a problem.

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