The Main Thing

There’s a saying that goes around in leadership circles that goes like this: the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. We get the implication in leadership, but I think the sentiment has major implications in our witness to a lost and dying world. I think a lot of times we confuse morality with transformation. We confuse political ideals with spiritual truth.
We sit around and talk about the “moral decay” in America. We look at the scantily clad woman in Wal-Mart or the sexually explicit joke on a TV show and we turn our nose up with some ignorant superiority complex. Morality is good. I applaud networks and organizations that uphold firm values and morals. I support politicians who share my values.
However, let’s get this straight. You can be moral and be lost. You can have the best of principles and still be on a path to split Hell wide open. Beyond that, any morality we claim to have as believers is not the result result of our own efforts, it’s because of Christ’s work and is not something we can boast in.The moment we begin to treat morality as the goal or as the problem or lack of morality as the problem is the moment we elevate the temporal over the eternal and make our fleshly accomplishments higher than Christ’s finished work. Ultimately, focus on morality means we’re neglecting the real condition of man’s soul.
Sinners are going to sin, it’s par for the course and we can’t act like it’ some intentional offense to us. It’s simply the nature of the beast. Until their soul is touched by the compassion of Christ, that will not change. If we would make our attitude more closely resemble that of our Savior and not run because our morality is affronted, but rather love and accept people, maybe we can see their behavior change because we finally made the main thing the main thing.