“Your beliefs are your actions. What you say is just what you think.” That was one of the first quotes I began using for my posts that then became the basis for daily blogging on the website. Back then I wasn’t thinking about the folks in Christianity that believe in “once saved, always saved” or thought saying a one-time prayer made everything else in your life alright, BUT I am now. Back then I was looking at the hypocrisy of my folks in the liberty movement and the hypocrisy of the folks that supported evil and immoral things. Even without Christ, I was looking for Truth. And if you look long enough for Truth, you will eventually end up meeting Jesus. And I did.
In both a broad sense and a specific sense, your beliefs are your actions. That is the basis for how we judge folks. We say things about folks saying one thing and doing another. And in this schizophrenic society that jumps from one world-shaking problem to another, folks can easily lose their moral compass. Folks can start living with a disjointed situational morality that gets to be exhausting and hypocritical. I prefer being based. I actually enjoy being called based. When I was a Libertarian, I used to be the object of jokes for having principles. Being principled was really important to me then and it still is today. Principles are what define our actions. Those principles distinguish what we truly believe.
It is easy to just talk about things. Folks do it all the time. This is a society of talkers and not doers. And that can be seen all over the place. Ask folks to do an activity related to a cause and they are all in. Ask folks to actively participate in making change and notice that no one is around. Folks would rather give a few dollars, sign something, walk a few steps, carry a sign, update their profile picture, or any other activity that does not involve making real change. I see it in every organization with which I give my time. A small percentage of people are actually doing the work.
It is a sign of an unhealthy church when discipleship and service are lacking among its members. I visit a lot of churches and during the cold months when the tricycle sits in the garage, I get more opportunities to wander further and visit more broadly. And a healthy church is a church that is serving the community. That is kind of the purpose of churches. They are embassies for Ambassadors of the Kingdom to serve the world. If the church is only there to hold a service two or three times a week, then it is missing its purpose, its calling, its actions. If we are only involved in church to sit in a pew, sing some songs, and drop some cash, are we being disciples? I don’t recall Jesus teaching that sort of service. He was out healing, helping, and serving the community. And I see a lot of churches, a lot of Christians missing that mark because it is a lot easier to leave that work to the help. BUT we are the help. Or, at least, we should be.
What do your actions show that you believe?