In areas of life that are not easy but involve ‘short term pain for long term gain’, there are many motives that might drive you. Many are not so good, and it can be hard to know what’s moving you or other people.
1) Fear and intimidation. Are you intimidated by an idea or a person or a group of persons, and therefore you go along with it/them? Do God’s threats and judgements weigh on your mind and propel you when making choices?
2) Feeling important or valuable in a group or to an organization.
- Do you want to be a member of the faculty, or are you involved with helping the faculty because you feel important and valuable to them, and you like that? Well ok.
- But what about when involved with an organization involved with the never ending and almost hopeless task of caring for terminally diseased or handicapped people? You may feel valuable and important, but being involved is really taxing and wearing on you.
- Or if you’re involved at church. It makes you feel valuable and important, and you like that, but what if that’s the only motive driving you? What happens when “pleasing God” and serving the congregation makes you feel worth nothing and easily replaceable, expendable?
3) A sense of belonging.
4) Family and social ties. You don’t want to upset or argue with people you love and depend on or have been close to for many years.
5) Unfounded dreams and hopes. You are lead to believe, or lead yourself to believe, some idea that you really like, based on a few shreds of evidence but clearly nothing explicit. For example, you see a gal and are attracted to her. You even get to meet her and talk ahwhile. Your mind soon races toward visions of her really liking you and her panties falling and her desire consuming you. But you never see her again. You were fooled because dreams and hopes motivated you to think more than was reasonable or ever declared or even stated. I’m sure there’s a woman’s version out there. Or would it be better termed ‘a girl’s version’?
6) Pride. I like feeling right and don’t want to feel wrong.
7) Habit.
8 ) Resignation. I have no other choice, so i’ll stick with the benefits and value of the current course, as long as it’s bearable.
9) A paycheck.
10) Brotherhood, patriotism, nationalism.
11) Obedience.
Better motives include things like thankfulness, interest, awe, justified hope, belief in the war, the mission.
Out on search-and-rescue missions, or at church, or in Iraq, it seems some of the people involved are not very enthusiastic. They seem like ‘bumps on a log’, or just ‘along for the ride’, and would rather be somewhere else. So what’s motivating them? Seems like they’re wasting time, involved with something they’re really not very “into”. However, they may be into it for the long-haul, not in a manner that looks like a “flash in the pan”. Or they may not look all that serious, but they know exactly why they’re enduring the difficulties of whatever they’re involved with.
