I'm in a little bit of a bind. Someone I care for needs help - a lot of help, and for the past few days, I've been providing it. But today, it seems likely that I'll be asked to do more than I probably should do. I theoretically, physically could do it, but it'd be a rather large sacrifice for me, and I'm not sure it'd be wise. Yet, I have to be careful with my judgement because I have to admit that I don't want to do it, and I don't want that bias to stop me from figuring out what the right thing to do would be.
Just to be practical, there are other people better suited to the job I may be asked to do today. It would be less of a sacrifice for them than it would be for me. It'd still be very inconvenient and sacrificial for most of them, but they could do it. And it wouldn't be as difficult or problematic for them to do it than it would be for me.
Is that a selfish way of thinking? Maybe. It's an honest evaluation, perhaps a faulty one if my information is wrong, but it's honest. I truly believe it would be easier for other people to perform this task than it would be for me.
But does that mean they should do it? Does it mean that the task falls to them, and not me? Does it mean that I can get away with telling the person who needs help that they should get someone else to help them? If I'm asked to perform this task, would I be morally justified in saying "no"?
The fact that I'm using terms like "justified" and "get away with" shed some light on what the right choice would be. Accepting the task would certainly be the more compassionate thing, even if it's not the most practical. Would Jesus go miles out of His way to help another person if there were someone else who was closer, or in other ways better suited for the job? Yes, I have to admit, He probably would.
But God delegates, doesn't He? When there's a work to be done, He doesn't often roll up His sleeves and does it Himself. He asks (or tells) other people to do it. I don't think that makes Him selfish. Then again, what He's really doing is giving us opportunities to work and learn and grow. I need to work and learn and grow, and this service opportunity may help me with that. But what if this isn't meant to be a sacrifice exercise, but a wisdom test? What if I'm supposed to learn that I don't need to worry about solving all of this person's problems, especially when there are other people who could do the job?
The big question that most of us need to have answered most frequently is "What should I do?" Should I say "yes" or "no"? Should I help? Should I tell the person who needs help to find someone else to help them? Should I find someone to help them for them? It's not my responsibility, per se. It's not my problem. It's not my fault. I'm not obligated to help them. Or am I? Am I morally obligated to help them because it'd be a better thing to do than to tell them to ask someone else? If I die right after I make this decision, which decision will I wish I had made?
Ugh, I hate my conscience. It's always trying to get me to do things I don't want to do. I think I should help the person who may need my help today. But what if I'm wrong in that thinking? When God delegates, He does it so we have opportunities to earn blessings, including natural spiritual growth. Also, the scriptures say that if a man gives a gift grudgingly, it's the same for that person as if they had retained it. If I help this person because I feel that I have to, I can't really expect to get any blessings out of it. But if the opportunity were given to someone else... Maybe they'd get the blessing my reluctance would have thrown away. Thus, the right thing to do would be to give someone else the opportunity to earn the blessing that I wouldn't have earned myself. Or, I could change my thinking to make sure I earn the blessing, but that would be just as selfish, since I'd then get the blessing and they wouldn't. It'd be more kind of me to give this service opportunity to someone else.
I'm pretty sure that at least half of that philosophical argument is utterly selfish and/or evil. I'm pretty sure I really have no choice. If I want to do the right thing, I have to do the right thing, whether I want to do the right thing or not. But if I'm only doing the right thing because I feel that I have no choice, is that really the right reason to do it? If someone does the right thing for the wrong reason, is it still the right thing to do? I can hardly think it'd be better for them not to do the right thing, no matter what their reasons are. I should help the person, because it's the right thing to do, whether anyone gets a blessing from it or not.
So, as far as morality is concerned, I certainly ought to help out. But does that still ring true if there's someone else who'd be better for the job? Say there's a guy who needs psychiatric help. I'm not a psychiatrist. I could say things to the person which may or may not help, but to be honest, if I try to help when I'm really not qualified to, I might just make things worse. Wouldn't it be better if I stepped back and let a real psychiatrist do the talking? I can't fix computers, either. Beyond reading the error messages very carefully and asking the user "Have you tried restarting it?" there's really not much I can do. In this case, it probably wouldn't hurt to try, but it wouldn't do any good, either.
In this case, there's almost no way I could accidentally hurt the person who needs help by trying to help them. And I can almost certainly help them just as well as the next guy, so I don't have either of those excuses to fall back on, but let's go back to the tech support scenario. Say I take the computer home to work on it, and it takes me hours to find out what the problem is and fix it, but I manage to get the computer working and back to its owner the next day. Alternatively, a tech guy could take it to his workshop, find out what the problem is much faster than I could, solve the problem, and have the computer back to its owner the next day. It's the same end result for the person who owns to computer. The difference is how much effort it takes to arrive at that result and who is the one who puts forth that effort. Should I still be the one who fixes the computer, or should I tell the computer's owner to find someone else to fix it?
Thankfully, the question has just become academic. Considering the problem a second time, I found that it's not as huge a sacrifice as I feared, and well-within the level of sacrifice I'm comfortable with making. So, this moral dilemma suddenly became much less daunting, and doing the right thing (which I hope I would have concluded that I would do, regardless of sacrifice) is now something I can do with relative ease. Thank Heaven for little miracles. And for giving me the opportunity to think about this. It makes me wonder what other challenges God would have me tackle, regardless of the difficulty of making the decision to act. How much am I willing to sacrifice to do what God wants me to do? I might have failed this test with all my reluctance, but it got me to think about the test, and maybe I've learned what I should do to pass similar tests in the future. Is any sacrifice great enough to justify not following the counsel of God? If God asked me to do something really difficult, shouldn't I do it, whether it's difficult or not? It's clearer to see now that the test is over, but when the next test comes... I just hope I can remember what I learned from this one.
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