That's Still Not It

Simply doing what is right because it is right is also an incomplete answer (from previous post). It doesn't address all I think and feel about why I try to do what is right. My desire to do what is right is also a love response. I love God and try to do things to please him. It is feeling and emotion based. It's a reciprocal arrangement, but not an equilateral exchange, not barter. I don't love God hoping he will bless me. I love him partially out of desire to serve a greater good and partially out of gratitude for blessings already received.

Oddly enough, I feel that love response, that gratitude for blessings received, even though by some assessments I have not been particularly blessed. I’m not blessed with wealth, honor, or authority; at my physical best, I hobble along on crutches. Of course, others would count me blessed. In our age’s shifting sea of values, all assessments are slippery and subjective. As I ponder the apparent on again, off again status of my personal blessings, I begin to wonder if gratitude for them truly motivates me.

Maybe we're back to doing right for its own sake, or perhaps we're back to Job again, this time looking at Satan's taunt:

"Is it for nothing that Job fears God? Have you not made a hedge around him and his household and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his livestock have increased in the land. But extend your hand and strike everything he has, and he will no doubt curse you to your face!"

Satan was wrong. Yes, Job was blessed, and in less ambiguous ways than I, but ultimately Job remained faithful even when he was, from an earthly perspective, unprotected and greatly harmed. Reading the account, we are hard pressed to discern Job's motivation for faithfulness. What was it he said? "Should we receive what is good from God, and not also receive what is evil?"

Job's response appears to me to reveal an unshakable conviction that God's actions, however they appear in the moment—even if they appear evil—are ultimately and eternally right.
Contrast this with the ease Satan's mere suggestion to Eve--another of God's children who had a hedge around her--that God was keeping something desirable from her turned her toward disobedience. His words were, “God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like divine beings."

I think Satan was wrong in a way that reveals his nature. His taunting was based on the assumption that Job's primary interest was self-interest, just as his strategy with Eve revealed his own desire to be "like divine beings." In Eve, Satan found a soul mate. In Job, Satan found God's man.