Good Work Part 2, God Instructs Us to do Good Work
“Do not be conformed to this world. but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
“Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children.”
And here is where we get to mesh two of the key ideas in this blog post series:
God does good work.
God created us in His image.
Standing alone, these are great! God does good work — in fact, He can only do good work — and He created us in His image — i.e. to be creative. However, put together they mean that we are called to do good work as well.
Well, that’s just an assumption.
And it’s Biblical, too! Check out Romans 12:2, Ephesians 2:10, and Ephesians 5:1! We as Christians are specifically called to do good work, chasing after the image that Christ left for us to follow.
So, what exactly does that mean? I can’t really reinvent the rainbow…
It means that, in using our God-given abilities and talents, we strive to do good work. At the core of all we do, we should have our ultimate goals be to honor God in a way that pleases Him and encourages our neighbors towards His truth.
This will mean that we have to avoid certain topics and popular trends in the stories that we tell and the art that we draw. We can’t chase the fads of this world if they are glorifying things that God is expressly against.
Now, don’t panic! This doesn’t mean that we are locked into only writing hymns and drawing crosses in the clouds for the rest of our lives. Sometimes we need to touch on difficult topics to put them into a Christian and moral context. But there is a serious difference between having something in your creation to make a point and glorifying it.
People make all kinds of sins and mistakes in the real world, and if we only focus on telling stories of characters that are always perfect and never sin, we create role models that no person on earth can live up to! Jesus was the only perfect person, all of the rest of us are finite little disasters. And sometimes we need heroes that are repentant or resisting temptation or simply aren’t perfect to show us how to navigate our own pitfalls and turns our hearts back to Christ. Present the sin, but don’t glorify it.
All stories have an innate morality. It is an inescapable reality. Even the most “fun” and “entertaining” stories are trying to tell you something. Be cognizant of the morality you are presenting in your creations!
Putting it into Action: Take a moment and look at the media you create and your goals behind creating it. Are your intentions to ultimately honor God with these things? Is there anything that you have been adding to your stories that you need to reassess or feel that God might be wanting you to leave out?
