Sometimes it is easy. It is easy to go help your best friend with a project or give them a gift when you happen upon something that reminds you of them. It is easy to care about causes that affect you, personally. It is easy to be kind with people you identify with or who you already know. It is easy to be generous with your time when you enjoy doing the activity you are being asked to perform. It is easy to spend money when we feel passionate about something we want or give to a charity we have a vested interest in supporting.
It isn’t as easy to be helpful when we aren’t feeling our best. Or to care about a cause that we are barely aware of. Or to be kind when we are angry at someone. Or give up our precious downtime when we know we aren’t going to enjoy something. Or spend our hard-earned money when we aren’t invested in the recipient.
Most of our decisions to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God aren’t even as easy to categorize as easy or hard. There is this whole grey area where we know the right thing to do, but we feel meh about it or just don’t wanna. We end up expending a bunch of energy deciding whether to spend our time, abilities, and money on something we know is good, but doesn’t make us feel anything. And each of us can only do so much with the resources we have.
So where do we put our energy?
Well, I can’t answer that for you. How we choose to spend what we have is tied to our individual core values, and those are as different for each of us as the gifts we have to share. But Jesus gives us some really helpful hints that might help us in our discernment.
First, he tells each of us to love your neighbor as yourself. He didn’t say, "Love your neighbor who looks like you, thinks like you, or gives you good vibes." This immediately pulls us out of that 'easy' zone and challenges us to look beyond our immediate comfort. It means being kind to the coworker who always annoys you, or donating to a disaster relief effort on a continent you'll likely never visit. It pushes us toward the uncomfortable good.
Second, Jesus models a focus on the marginalized and the unseen. He didn't just spend time with his friends; he sought out the sick, the poor, the outcast, and the people society actively avoided. This is perhaps the greatest litmus test for that "meh" feeling. When you’re faced with an opportunity to do good, ask yourself: "Who benefits if I say 'yes,' and is that person or cause being overlooked by everyone else?" If it's a cause that doesn't affect your community directly, or a person who can offer you nothing in return—that's often where the truest kind of love is required. That’s where you have to rely on your values, not your feelings.
The goal isn't to make every single decision a painful sacrifice. That’s a recipe for burnout, not justice. The goal is to consistently shift our baseline of "easy" and "hard" so that the 'meh' decisions start leaning toward generosity.
Think of it like spiritual weightlifting. We start by being generous when it’s easy. Then, we intentionally step into that grey area and push ourselves to do one small, good thing that we really don't feel like doing. Maybe it’s an extra $5 to a random charity, spending an hour helping with a thankless task, or genuinely listening to a viewpoint you disagree with.
We are all limited, but we are also all called. Instead of letting that 'meh' feeling paralyze you, let Jesus’s model be your simple, witty guiding principle: Go where the love is needed, not where the love is easy. Do that enough times, and you might find that the 'hard' becomes a little less so, and the 'meh' starts feeling a lot more like 'yes.'
Discerning with you,
John