Several weeks ago, I wrote a post on a talk my Courage chaplain gave, in which he talked about the need to focus on doing good rather than simply avoiding evil. I began thinking about this more on Easter Sunday when I was listening to a program on the local Christian radio station. In this program, the guest talked about the Pharisees and how they tried to follow the law to the T, but how they weren’t focused so much on loving their fellow man. When I was listening to this, I realized that this is how I often act. I am so worried about obeying the commandments and the teachings of the Church that I forget that my greater calling is to love God with all of my heart, soul, and my mind, and to love my neighbor as myself for love of Him. Now, please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying that it is not important to obey the commandments and the teaching of the Church. What I am saying, however, is that my primary focus needs to be on loving God and loving my fellow man. Instead of trying to follow the commandments and the teachings of the Church solely because I believe that God will take away all of my troubles by doing so, I need to avoid sin out of love for God. I also need to avoid falling into sins like homosexuality, lust, and pornography because these sins involve using people as sexual objects, which of course is not loving.
But I also need to find ways to do perform loving acts of kindness, as my Courage chaplain alluded to several weeks ago. What does this mean practically speaking? Well, it means that I can pray for the person who drives me crazy instead of thinking about how much he drives me crazy. It also means that I shouldn’t cut back on my volunteering even though I am often tempted to. There’s a lot more things I can do to show my love for God and my love for my fellow man. I just need to be thinking about the things I can do in each particular situation I find myself in.
So will taking my focus off avoiding sin result in me falling into sin more? I can’t really say at this point, because this is a new approach that I have never tried before. But my instinct tells me that it probably won’t. My first priority needs to be to love God with all my heart and to love my fellow man as I love myself, as Our Lord commanded (Mk 12:30-31). If feel if I do this, avoiding sin will just take care of itself.
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