Why do you follow God?
At foundation, the proper motivation is self-interest. Many don’t want to believe this. How do you convince them?
Keep asking “why?”
If there is an answer at all to the question of “why?” it must be a reason and it must be a reason for that person. If you can convince a person to keep asking why, he will keep getting closer to the inevitable answer of self-interest.
Can John Piper’s famous maxim be reversed?
Piper said the chief end of man is “to glorify God by enjoying him forever.”
But what if we said the chief end of man is “enjoy God by glorifying him forever”?
These statements have different meanings. Let me show how they are both true. Piper’s version speaks of God’s purposes for us. God made us so that we could enjoy him and thus bring him glory. There is a means and an end.
Does God want us to be motivated by his rewards?
For a very long time people have been singing of their great reward. And not only Americans.
The Hebrew book of worship, the Psalms, is prefaced by the following:
Blessed is the man
who walks not
In the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stands in the way of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
That yields its fruit in its season,
And its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
-Ps 1:1-3
Here are 50 of my favorite lines of blessing in the hymns.
I advocate an unusual approach to these topics based what I see as a foundational principle in Scripture: Holy Self-Interest.
The principle says:
“It is always in your rational self-interest to do the right thing.”
Rightly understood, self-interest and morality are inseparable. The right thing is the right thing because it leads to your own rational self-interest.
This article explains holy self-interest as the correct motivation for being a worshiper of God.
While many agree that there is such thing as holy self-interest, most Christians do not accept holy self-interest as the Christian’s main motivation. The first and most important step in my own life project is to show that it is.
