Love, Faith, and the Tension of Choosing Well, part 3

Let's see. What are my choices here?

a) "Bend" the car deals to my favor ever so slightly, thereby increasing my gross profit on the car, while at the same time slowly spiralling toward the abyss of self-loathing brought on my a loss of integrity and a kingdom-lived life.

b) Honestly deal with my customers, giving them the best price I am able to give them, thereby losing gross profit, but hanging on to my integrity and being able to look at myself in the mirror each morning without wanting to punch myself in the chest.

The choice seems obvious, right? And it is obvious.

But you wouldn't believe the tension I live under each day to keep choosing "B".

There is always tension, isn't there? If there wasn't tension, I'm not sure anyone would ever choose wrongly. The tension comes in the fact that choice "a" looks pretty dang good sometimes, especially when you aren't selling as many cars as you would like to and you need to maximize what you make on each sale, because you don't know when you might sell another one.

See? Tension.

Each day it gets a little harder to choose well. "A" starts to look pretty good. But each day of choosing "B" brings with it a new strength and resolve to choose well, to not give in to the desire for more. I can't explain the strength, though I know where it comes from. Here's the tie-in with faith: when you see the bank account dwindling down towards zero, and the car lot isn't swarming with people, and you've only sold one car in the last two weeks, you start to have an increasing desire to bend your will toward "A" and screw the consequences. But I have to keep trusting that if I remain faithful to choosing well that God will somehow pull my proverbial bacon out of the lion's den (yes, that's a huge mixed metaphor, but I like it) and I'll be able to pay for my house.

We live with tension as followers of Christ. We live to die and die so that we might live; we live lives of sacrifice in a world of selfishness; we find hope where none has existed before and faith when the flood waters rise and the wind beats against the house. And the rewards for choosing well are sometimes invisible, but they are for both now and forever.

And it is THAT that keeps me choosing well.

shalom, matt