Why changing our intentions can change the world
“We were upside down hanging like bats.” This is how one passenger described what happened when a Delta flight made a hard landing Monday afternoon in Toronto, lost a wing, burst into flames, and flipped onto its roof. Delta said twenty-one injured people were taken to local hospitals; nineteen were released by the next morning. Three had critical but non-life-threatening injuries, one of whom was a child. However, there were no fatalities.
If you’re like me, the last sentence changes how you read the rest of the paragraph.
In other news, a supercomputer simulation has predicted when humanity will go extinct. It foresees a day when rising temperatures, volcanic chaos, and an unrecognizable climate will make most of our planet uninhabitable for mammals. However, this cataclysmic apocalypse will not occur for another two hundred and fifty million years.
Again, if you’re like me, the last sentence changes how you read the rest of the paragraph.
One more example: US shoppers are dumping favorite brands over their political stances. According to a new poll, four in ten Americans have shifted their spending in recent months to align with their moral views. Unsurprisingly, boycotts usually come from the consumer base whose party is not in power in Washington.
Customers are therefore evaluating products through the lens of personal ideology rather than the product itself. For example, the backlash against Bud Light when it partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney cost the parent company $395 million but had nothing to do with the taste of its beer.
“This is the hope of our calling”
It is human nature to focus on those parts of nature that affect us as humans. Evolutionary psychology would explain this as a manifestation of our instinct for survival. Pragmatists would encourage our focus on the parts of the world that work for us personally. Postmodern existentialists would say that the only dimension of the universe we can experience is that which directly affects us, so we naturally experience it on a more visceral level.
However, I think there’s another way to see the way we organize and manage our engagement with the larger world.
Jesus told his disciples, “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit” (John 15:16). God intends us to be “a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work” (2 Timothy 2:21, my emphasis).
We know that our salvation is by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8) and “not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (v. 9). However, the next verse states, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (v. 10, my emphasis).
“For good works” could be translated as, “for the purpose of accomplishing the works for which we are intended.” One scholar comments, “God marks out for each in his purposes beforehand the particular good works and the time which he sees best. God both makes ready by his providence the opportunities for the works, and makes us ready for their performance.”
In addition, “that we should walk in them” could be rendered, “that we should continue to accomplish them until they are completely fulfilled.” John Chrysostom (died AD 407) noted:
We need a virtue which shall last throughout and be extended on to our dying day. If we had to travel a road leading to a royal city, and then when we had passed over the greater part of it, were to flag and sit down near the very close, it were of no use to us. This is the hope of our calling . . . Otherwise it would profit us nothing.
All actions derive from a prior intention
God created you and me for “good works” specific to our personal lives and our place and time in the world. It is therefore only logical that we would focus more specifically on those events and circumstances which not only affect us but which we can affect.
Jesus was always present in the moment, wherever he went. The One who came to save the world ministered to one broken body and sinful soul at a time.
Here’s the problem: You and I are inundated every day with news from literally around the world. And fear-based programming is proven to attract attention and generate profits, in large part because our “negativity bias” instinctually looks for risks so we can avoid them. All of this in a time when we see more news in a day than our ancestors confronted in a lifetime.
Here’s why this matters.
John Locke, the famed British philosopher, argued that all actions derive from a prior intention. Unless external obstacles prevent us, he observed, “What follows after that follows in a chain of circumstances, linked one to another, all depending on the last determination of the will” (his emphasis).
However, when our intention is to better the world, the actions that are required feel as overwhelming as the task itself.
If the devil can’t make you bad
This is one way Satan uses our faith-driven compassion for the world against us. As the saying goes, if the devil can’t make you bad, he’ll make you busy. If he can use the cacophony of bad news that swirls around us to distract us from the “good works” our Lord intends for us today, he’ll keep us from impacting our culture for Christ.
And, over time, he may convince us to abandon the effort of cultural transformation altogether.
When the entire universe feels dark, your light may seem inconsequential. If you then “put it under a basket,” everyone in your “house” loses (Matthew 5:15). Including you.
So, to employ Locke’s assertion, let’s begin the day by reframing our “intention.” Leo Tolstoy observed:
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
If our intention is to be more like Jesus today, and if we then ask God’s Spirit to transform us into the character of his Son, we can never be the same. Over time, the actions that derive from our intentions will impact the people we influence. And they will touch the people we cannot until a movement of culture-changing Christians multiplies around the world.
If you’re thinking God could never use your life in such a transformative way, that you’re too busy and the world is too broken to make a difference that matters, guess where that thought is coming from.
Quote for the day:
“Preachers are not salesmen, for they have nothing to sell. They are bearers of Good News.” —Billy Graham
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