The crusade is the military
expedition undertaken by the Christians of the Western Europe around the
eleventh century tot eh thirteenth century with the main purpose to repossess
and recover the Holy Land from the Muslims. In general, the crusaders have the
initial right motive to fight for the Christian; however, their motive is not
pure. They have other supporting motives that could benefit themselves by
joining the crusade. Some clear examples of this case could be seen on the
peasants and the clergy. The peasants joined the crusade not just to fight for
Christianity, but also to experience adventure out of their routine and boring
life. Similarly, the clergy joined the crusade not only to fight for the
Christians, but also to clear themselves from the accuse of corruption. As a
consequence of their mix motive, they mostly failed to accomplish their purpose
since God knows the insincere heart.
Having motive could be considered
natural for every man since we are a fallen creature such that we have the
tendency to sin. The insincere motive or the mix motive is still clearly seen
in the world today, especially in our governments and politicians. Many of them
state during the campaign that they have a heart to truly serve the nation for
the sake of acquiring a high position; however, they most of them obviously
have a hidden motive to actually use their position to gain benefits for
themselves. The insincere motives of the politicians have been proven by the
many case of corruption where as a consequence they would lose everything when
they were caught at the end and even imprisoned.
People should understand that
having the right motive itself is not enough since the motive should also be
pure. The Bible stated in Colossians 3: 23 that when we do something, we should
do it with all our hearts as we are working for the Lord and not for men. This
means that when we do something, God will be the one who judge us whether we
did it sincerely or not. The next verse, verse 24, explained that if we do it
sincerely, we will receive a reward from God; on the other hand, the following
verse, verse 25, explained that if we're not sincere in what we do, we receive
according to what we have done. Therefore, when we have the partial motive to
sin, we will also not receive a full blessing from God; moreover, the sin
itself will find us out with following consequences.
As a personal application, I
often have a mixed motive or insincere motive especially when I'm on duty to
serve the church community. Besides having the sincere motive of serving God, I
serve my church community so that I could be more popular and known by the
church community. After serving in that community for certain time, I actually
got few new friends, but it was not satisfying and it doesn't change my life.
When I finally realize about having sincere heart from a lecture, I started to
clear my other motive and only serve that church community for the sake of God.
Since then, many people started to came to me and my service schedule increase;
furthermore, I feel like God gave me more blessing in my life that I succeed in
almost all things. I realize that when I do something sincerely for God, He
will bless me abundantly.
As a conclusion, when we are doing
something, we often have a mixed motive or insincere heart. This is considered
natural to every man since we have the sinful nature that we have the tendency
to follow our fleshly desire. As a consequence, our insincere motive will cause
us to fail at the end since the sin will find us out as stated in Numbers
32:23. The history has shown us a clear example of such case through the
crusaders where most of them do not have a sincere motive of fighting for
Christianity. As a result, they failed almost all of their expedition. We
should understand that God is the one who will judge our heart in a way that
when we do something sincerely with pure motive, we will receive the reward
from God; otherwise, when we do something with a mix motive, we will receive according
to what we deserve including the consequences. People seldom consider about
this matter of sincerity, but indeed it plays an important part in determining
consequences in life. Oscar Wilde, an Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and
Critic, mention that A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal
of it is absolutely fatal.