{"id":55152,"date":"2008-10-11T21:08:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-12T02:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/?p=55152"},"modified":"2022-10-11T21:11:08","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T02:11:08","slug":"because-it-is-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/because-it-is-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Because It Is Right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t

by Jim R. Everett<\/p>\n

\"\"Reward incentive motivation permeates our society. People respond to rewards just like little puppies do. Some parents think only in terms of rewarding their children, and, they even reward them for being bad. When a parent says to a little child, “If you will quit throwing a temper tantrum, we will go get an ice cream as soon we get away from the doctor’s office,” he is rewarding bad behavior and the child quickly understands how to get what he wants. The “in thing” now in many churches is to offer physical rewards for being religious. That ranges from the “gospel of health and wealth” that says, “If you give $100, God will give you $1,000,” to appealing to the fleshly appetites of entertainment to get people to come to “church.”<\/p>\n

Whatever happened to doing right because it is right? Surely, Jesus offers men rewards but those incentives have nothing to do with sensual desires. In fact, he condemned those who followed him because they were fed — “Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life<\/em>,”(John 6:29). The reward for righteousness is eternal life with God. God expects right behavior because he is holy and we must be like him to share in spiritual life(1 Peter 1:15-16).<\/p>\n

Christians are committed to a way of life that is righteous because it is the right way to live. Sometimes the righteous life may offer a material advantage but that isn’t why the Christian lives that way. At other times, being righteous may be a difficult road and the righteous may be mocked and persecuted. The disciple of the Lord does right when people speak well of him and when they do not — his motivation is doing right because it is the right thing. to do.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jim R. Everett Reward incentive motivation permeates our society. People respond to rewards just like little puppies do. Some parents think only in terms of rewarding their children, and, they even reward them for being bad. When a parent says to a little child, “If you will quit throwing a temper tantrum, we will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,1028],"tags":[665,38,499,29,107],"class_list":["post-55152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","category-parenting","tag-child-rearing","tag-morality","tag-motivation","tag-parenting","tag-raising-children"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2095,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/can-spanking-hurt-a-childs-feelings\/","url_meta":{"origin":55152,"position":0},"title":"Can spanking hurt a child’s feelings?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: My son was very rude and would not explain his behavior. I must mention that it has been over a month since the last time that I spanked him. At that time I gave him a spanking in front of everyone. It was very effective, so I used the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":58894,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/punishment-doesnt-help\/","url_meta":{"origin":55152,"position":1},"title":"Punishment Doesn’t Help","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Mark Roberts Journalist Betsy Flagler writes the syndicated \"Parent to Parent\" column that asks readers to write in with parenting problems and then tries to get expert help for those troubles. A mother in California recently wrote in that her first-grader has been pushing and hitting, has been kicked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/02\/tantrum.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":16449,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/todays-child-experts-punishment-does-not-help\/","url_meta":{"origin":55152,"position":2},"title":"Today’s Child Experts: “Punishment Does Not Help”","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 5, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"by Mark Roberts Journalist Betsy Flagler writes the syndicated \"Parent to Parent\" column that asks readers to write in with parenting problems and then tries to get expert help for those troubles. A mother in California recently wrote in that her first-grader has been pushing and hitting, has been kicked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/scolding.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8956,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/should-a-child-be-warned-about-bad-adults\/","url_meta":{"origin":55152,"position":3},"title":"Should a child be warned about bad adults?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 9, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Should parents explain to children that there are adults out there who may have bad reasons for wanting to spank them (even though\u00a0the adults may tell the child it's punishment for something bad he or she did)? Is so, what's the best way to address the subject so that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42540,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-do-i-get-a-child-to-stop-swearing\/","url_meta":{"origin":55152,"position":4},"title":"How do I get a child to stop swearing?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"April 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hello Jeffrey, I was wondering if you could give me a few strategies for deterring swearing in my eight-year-old. It has already happened twice in the last few days, and I've explained to him why it's not appropriate to say those things. 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He likes to pawn them off\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}