Misguided Effort? 5

I am not getting much traction from my homies on this topic.  If this were on Facebook, I would not have any likes, and if there were a dislike button I would probably get a few of them.  This makes me think either I am wrong or I haven't communicated my point sufficiently.  I will assume the later, because I blog.  That's what I do, or, as Malia reminds me, I like to hear myself talk.

To be honest, I pursue this line of thinking because I have my doubts that it doesn't get better than this (this being the ordinary type of helping I talked about in one of the previous posts in this series).  I see enough of the way it is all around me.  There are exceptions, there's Jesus and Ghandi and Mother Teresa, and even some modern day examples of their kind, but they are just that, exceptions.  I want there to be something better, both in myself and in the world around me.  It is quite possible that there is and I have not learned to see it. 

If the answers at the end of 4 were rhetorical, it is incumbent upon Jesus's followers to demonstrate that it is possible.  My next question, that is not rhetorical, is how do I (we?) move in that direction?    I have some ideas, but cannot speak from much experience.  One thing that has been helpful is seeing others that seem to be doing it (exceptional helping).  My friend, Dennis, posted the other day that he got a phone call at 3:30 am from one of the homeless.  He was sick and had thrown up all over himself.  Dennis went and got him from his camp, took him home, bathed him, and washed his clothes.  I am astounded by a couple of things.  First, that he answered the phone at 3:30 am.  I would have looked at the caller ID and probably let it ring.  Secondly, this man knew who to call at 3:30 am.  Third, he seemed to have a good attitude about it.  I don't need to have lengthy discussions about how to do it.  Just hearing about it and seeing this type of stuff in action has been helpful and encouraging.  

Good is good.  I am happy for good.  I will concede that ordinary good (that done as a secondary purpose with some other self-serving purpose being the primary, even if a close second), is, I would argue, probably the highest form of human goodness on the good-evil continuum.  But, I am thinking Jesus was inviting us to something beyond this.  The rest of Luke 9 seems to demonstrate that vs49 and 50 were not the end of what Jesus was trying to teach his disciples.  He seems to be inviting us to something exceptional, something wholy devine.  If so, I don't want to settle.  I don't want to be complacent.  

Like I said, I may be wrong about this, but I hope I am not.