Unspoken Bribes

Christianity is filled with people that verbally agree to follow a great many of the same principles: those of charity, self-sacrifice, personal betterment, and character. After all, if we act out the things God and the Bible tell us, doesn’t that prove that we are good, acceptable, admirable people? What about those who act out those things only to be glorified by people? What happens when serving another is the selfish use of another’s need for personal glory?

Maybe Sam gives George sorely needed money to pay a bill, to be praised by him, and to have influence and elevated standing with him.

Surely, helping him pay the bill for selfish reasons is better than not helping him at all, right? Say George ignorantly gives Sam what he wants: praise, influence, and standing? What has now transpired?

This is an unspoken bribe.

Sam has now been given undeserved standing and influence over an innocent man, all “in the name of Christ and charity”.

What of George? He has now been diminished, regardless of whether he is conscious of it or not. His countenance will suffer unjustly, now less able to justify and spot the strength that exists within him in the context of faith. He was not a dignified son of God in his need, but a person subjected to another’s charity, and it’s invisible price tag.

The story gets worse if George is, in fact, a much better man than Sam. It would make him more estranged from that reality than he was before, obscuring the truth of what his standing is in the faith, since Sam was the “noble unselfish Christian”

The unspoken bribe is a mechanism by which hierarchies between people in faith communities become corrupted. It places people in positions they do not belong both on the scale of great and not-so-great – they don’t even have to be official positions in churches, but could also be unspoken social order in groups. – the highly esteemed, or the mediocre person.

But if the groups function as they should, is it really so bad?

It is. It is extremely bad. Because it won’t last long, since we know God will scrutinize those who have risen to the top of those hierarchies that often lead. (1 Cor 3:11-15)

How does this happen?

A good act done for the pleasurable glory of man will grow a selfish heart- and doing so successfully will cause it to become increasingly addicted in doing so. It makes a person feel big, influential, and justified. After many iterations of this, an entire evil nature is fortified, which God must expose, for the sake of everyone involved. And when it is exposed, it usually looks like the fall of a high standing person due to moral incompetence of some form or another – to everyone’s surprise. The fallen person never developed character to withstand the temptations that befall us in life – they had played a social game instead all along.

How can we prevent this from happening?

1. Try to find your dignity in Christ in the context of your suffering or need. This will allow you to detect when your dignity is at stake in what could be an unspoken bribe. You will notice the emotional shift in you makes you feel smaller than before.
2. If you take the charity of another, give much more glory to God than them, and if they get angry, quote them Matt 5:16: Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

If they did get angry when you gave much more glory to God, and you have given them the above verse, confront them gently and tactfully on why they are doing acts of charity that have nothing to do with God’s glory, but instead for personal gain.

By doing so you may save them from going down an evil path, and can spare a group from suffering from a corrupted social hierarchy.

If you are at risk of committing selfish charity, pray God for help, and talk to people about it in your community that you can trust.

The process of learning unselfish charity is a path that God works out within us. Our need to do things for praise exists in our bones, and often requires solutions that are just as deep.

If you need help with unspoken bribes, or suspect you have suffered diminished countenance from it somehow, drop a line at the bottom of the homepage

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