Pharisees one day saying, "You people justify yourselves in men's sight, but God knows your hearts; and what men exalt, God often detests." Here then we find the root of this matter of righteousness. God knows that we are good only when our hearts are pure, our motives fair and unselfish, and our imaginations clean. "Happy are the pure-minded," said Jesus. Are you keeping well under control the imaginations of your heart? Do you have conscience censor strictly all the pictures there, or do you let your imagination reel off picture after picture that you would not wish your mother to see? Remember there is where the criminal rehearses his crime until he gets the courage to put it into action. And there also, in the imagination camera, every good deed is first pictured and idealized, until opportunity finally makes it real in life. Your imagination is the seat of power and of danger, for good or evil, in your personal life. Your character problem is simply to form noble images of conduct in your imagination, and then to mind your images. Does friendship with Jesus Christ have anything to do with that? POINTS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Why did you criticize that brigand who had no scruples against highway robbery, but would not eat meat on Friday? Why is it so many of us are conscientious only in streaks? What are you most conscientious about? What are you apt to be lax about? 2. Discuss the external righteousness of the Pharisees; their peculiar rules of punctilious conduct, and why Jesus refused to keep these rules or teach them. 3. Contrast Jesus' positive ideals of goodness with the many prohibitions of the Pharisees. Does obeying negative commands really make people good? What more is necessary? 4. What is the difference between character and reputation? Discuss that case of the young draftsman in the text. Of what value is it for a person to do a good act merely to gain a reputation for goodness? 5. A mother once said to her daughter, "If you go to that party to-night, you cannot come into this house again." She went, though it meant reform school later. What do you think of that mother? 6. Miss Moxcey, in Girlhood and Character, p. 266, describes a girl who was active in personal work in a revival, but habitually broke a certain rule in school and tried in vain to escape detection. When her teacher appealed to her ambition for religious leadership as a motive for changing her attitude, the girl replied in surprise, "I don't see what that has to do with it." What do you think was wrong with that girl's ideal of righteousness? 7. Explain how the beginnings of both badness and goodness are found in "the imaginations of the heart." Show how it becomes harder to resist temptation after you have thought about it and pictured it several times in your mind. Do you think it is a good thing for children to see films which picture crime? FOR FURTHER STUDY AND HONOR WORK 8. It says in 1 John 3: 15, "He who hates his brother is a murderer." Would Jesus agree with this? Explain how the real essence of murder is hatred in the heart. Do you think most murders are first rehearsed in imagination? 9. Study that whole passage beginning with Matthew 5: 20 to see how Jesus altered the Old Testament's lower ideas of right and wrong. Do you think his ideals were better? Why? 10. Some young folks are too conscientious in little matters that do not count. Are you or any of your friends troubled for fear you have done wrong without intending to do so? What do you think Jesus would say to this? CHAPTER XII SINCERITY, THE TEST OF WORK AND A FAVORITE riddle used to be, "Would you rather be thought better than you really are, or be better than folks think?" An honest answer to this question will test your character. Ask yourself honestly whose good opinion you are most anxious for, God's or your neighbor's. Are you struggling hard to keep up appearances? Are you pretending to be better than you are? Or are you convinced that the ideal in our last chapter is true, that the only real goodness is heart-righteousness from God's point of view? If so, then you would rather be better, whatever people think. The folly of sham and pretense. The young man who frequently gambled late Saturday nights with three or four sport companions, but used to talk piously in a young people's meeting Sunday night to keep up his reputation, was something of a fool as well as knave. It worked for awhile, and some good people spoke of him as "a model young business man, so earnest and so promising!" But the fulfillment of the promise never came. His reputation became bankrupt when his gambling mania developed into speculation and he stole from his employer to cover his losses. His friends then wished he had never pretended to be pious, for it made his collapse of character seem all the worse to people. The town treasurer, who filched several thousand dollars from the treasury in small sums through a long period of years, was meanwhile sending up a sort of smoke screen by teaching a Sunday-school class and taking a prominent part in his church. This kept up his local reputation for integrity and helped him to gain other positions of trust. But such dark things are almost certain to come to light finally. An honest and courageous auditor one day found out this pious man's peculations and revealed them to an astonished community. They discovered his reputation was built on a false foundation. Such moral shams are like the hidden weakness of the foundation under old Winchester cathedral. Instead of a rock basis, or at least deep-driven piles, the east end was built upon a massive oak raft, actually floating in water many feet deep in the swampy soil. The stone structure at this end of the beautiful cathedral stood firm for centuries, but gradually twisted, settled, and threatened to collapse. When the rotting foundation was brought to light by excavation, the great church, of priceless value, was saved from ruin only by injecting vast quantities of concrete for new foundations, at the cost of half a million dollars. Shams are dangerous, often expensive, seldom successful, always foolish. They may deceive men for a few days or years, but they never fool God. Do not try to deceive yourself. God is not to be trifled with. Whatsoever a man sows, that he will also reap.-Galatians 6: 7. Jesus' ideal of the genuine life.-Perhaps the outstanding quality in Jesus' own character was genuineness. He hated shams worse than anything else, unless it was censoriousness; and when he found both of these together in the Pharisees he let his righteous indignation blaze out against them like liquid fire. He believed in the transparent life. He thought of sincerity in terms of light and used this beautiful figure often. |