I’m a pretty well-intentioned person and I’m guessing you are too. Our motives are almost always pointing in the right direction. We want what’s good for others and ourselves.
The problem is how we get from here to there. How do we get from our current situation to the one our intentions are pointing toward? This is the territory of compromise and even of evil — all of it done with good intentions.
Let’s start with an easy target: Marxist ideology. Communist regimes caused more death and suffering in the world than any other in human history — Joseph Stalin’s purges, Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, and Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge accounted for up to 70 million civilian deaths in the last century. But Marxism is based on the desire for poor and weak workers to be treated more fairly in a world that often tramples them in favor of the wealthy and strong. Good intentions led to horrific results in these cases.
But it’s not just ideologies that are well-intentioned but compromised. It’s us in our everyday lives.
The single mother who has been working her butt off at three jobs in order to care for her kids discovers she can cut back to one job if she turns a couple tricks a week. Now, she’s got more time for her kids and less financial stress.
The pastor whose congregation demands numerous administrative duties during the week and pithy, quotable sermons on Sunday discovers he can re-preach the sermons he hears on podcasts from other churches. Now he’s less stressed and the congregation is happy with their pastor.
In Mark 3:6 and later on in Mark 12:13, we are introduced to the unholy alliance of the Pharisees and the Herodians. The Pharisees were devout conservative Jews. The Herodians were political pragmatists who so longed for an independent Jewish state that they supported the corrupt Herod family. Together, these two parties collaborated in opposing Jesus. Their motives were good — they both saw him as a threat (the Pharisees saw him as a religious threat and the Herodians saw him as a threat to the political status quo) — but those motives were compromised by seeking the death of the Son of God. They remind me of the unholy alliance of Evangelical Christians and the Republican Party. (That doesn’t mean I’m a Democrat or support that party. To be honest, I can’t support either party, each for their own reasons.)
Good motives don’t excuse bad practices. In fact, the well-intentioned are often the worst of tyrants.
Years ago, environmentalists in Washington state faced a strange situation. For years, they had advocated for the removal of a series of dams on the Snake River because of the harm those dams do to migrating salmon. Low numbers of spawning salmon made the cause urgent. But then, unexpectedly, the numbers shot through the roof. Everything was great! Well, kinda.
Along the way, the goal of saving salmon had shifted. No longer was the focus on salmon, it had moved to the dams. No one noticed the shift. It had happened quietly and without notice, just like the Herodians slowly shifting from longing for the kingdom of God and ending up supporting the kingdom of Herod.
Instead of applauding the return of the salmon, some environmentalists were frustrated that their argument against the dams had been dealt a severe setback. If only the salmon had returned after the dams were removed!
It is so ironic when we become unhappy about the arrival of the very thing we wanted in the first place because it got displaced along the way. The fact that the Herodians longed for the Messiah to come and establish the kingdom of God and ended up as part of a conspiracy to kill Jesus, the actual Messiah who came to usher in the kingdom of God, is bitterly ironic.
The slow creep of goals happens all the time and we need to be ever vigilant to return to our primary goals. This is the only way we keep our motives pure and uncompromised.
So, a few clarifying questions:
Where have your goals crept?
Where have your motives remained true but your practices become compromised?
Where have you stopped celebrating primary victories because they hurt secondary goals?
Who watches you to make sure your motives and practices align?