Doing Something

I believe that each of Jesus’ parables was taught with one basic lesson in mind; however, they are so rich and full of insight that sometimes parallel principles can be gathered.  Take for example, the Parable Of The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).  Initially the story answered the verbal question, “Who is my neighbor?” and followed up on how we should demonstrate our love to them.  While the focus of the parable is on the Samaritan who loved his neighbor, there might be a secondary lesson found in the priest and the rabbi.  Neither of them did anything to further harm the injured man they encountered along their path … in fact, they didn’t do anything at all.  Interestingly their lack of action provided a backdrop for godliness – someone doing good.  We have a hero in our story (the Samaritan), we have some bad guys (the robbers) and then we have these two men.  They were not as vile as the offenders, but they didn’t live up to the level of Christ-approved activity.
As I thought about this parable I was reminded of a quote that is often attributed to Sir Edmond Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”.  In essence, evil may not have to fight too hard if it is met with apathy.  In fact, all evil needs to be successful is, well, nothing.  When good people are satisfied to sit on the sidelines and watch the parade of evil pass by, everyone might be content but everyone will lose!  Being successful at doing nothing is possible, it just isn’t is profitable. 
When the church in Thessalonica was confronted with idleness (some of the members were successfully doing nothing), Paul confronted it head-on.  While the original context is most likely addressing people who had stopped working and were living off of the labors of others, all of us can learn from the apostle’s challenge:
“For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread. But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good.” (II Thessalonians 3:11-13)
I think we can take away a couple of secondary lessons from this text.  First, Christians cannot be content to merely do no harm.  We can’t get by with the goal of “I just don’t want to do something wrong.” because that can easily morph into “I just won’t do anything at all.”.  That leads us to his second platitude – do not grow weary of doing good.  Christianity is about action, positive action.  Sure, we must avoid evil, but we are called to be engaged in good.  Christian action does more than fulfill the will of God, it is also an act of discipleship to the greatest Do-Gooder of all time – Jesus Himself!

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