Many bags look alike.

One of the concepts people seem to find challenging about Christianity is the difference between the way a Christian does what is right and the way a person imitating a Christian does what is right. But in reality, this isn’t hard to understand at all. Consider two employees who know there will be a performance review a few months in the future.

The first one is generally a good employee, and he has a strong relationship with his boss (both knowing and being known quite well). He might jot down some notes to document his activities, but this is mostly just to make his reviewer’s task easier. He enters the review with the attitude that he will be evaluated fairly and given any rewards he deserves, trusting his boss’s judgment.

The second one doesn’t really like his job, doing only what he must to not be fired, and he barely knows his boss. But, anticipating the review, he deliberately starts doing more and carefully documenting his good work. He obviously does not include an equally meticulous account of his prior slacking. His goal is get a better position or pay than he really deserves by fooling his boss, whose approval he covets but whose judgment he clearly neither trusts nor respects.

I would think it’s needless to say that although the second strategy may work with men, it does not work with God. But given how prevalent it seems to be, I guess it’s not so needless to say after all.