Focusing on Goodness
The S2 Lotus Elise was a sensation when it finally debuted in the American market in the early 2000s. Yet with 190 horsepower, it didn’t make as much power as some people wanted (perhaps they didn’t realize that its massaged Toyota 2ZZ engine was already significantly more potent than the 118 horsepower found in the S1 Elise in 1997). When American automotive journalists asked why it wasn’t more powerful, Lotus engineers confidently answered: weight.
Their thinking goes like this: more power necessitates bigger brakes and wider contact patches, meaning bigger wheels and tires. Those have to fit under the car somehow, resulting in a larger or at least wider body. The control arms and suspension mounting points ought to be stronger to handle that heft too. A more powerful car will handle turns at much higher speeds, so the steering rack should be stronger and probably bigger too, and before you know it, you have a BMW 8-series.
For Lotus folks, weight is the enemy. They will sacrifice some power if that power increases weight and dilutes the focus. So the engineers knew which line they couldn’t cross. In a way, they weren’t becoming weary in doing good.
This was the whole point of Paul’s letter to the young Christ-following church in Galatia: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” (Galatians 6:9-11)
Weariness happens when people lose sight of the good they know they want to do, or they lack motivation to do it. This is like “weight creep” and the inherent bloating of modern cars; it’s inevitable. Weariness of doing good takes a variety of forms:
Being skeptical of people who claim to desire doing good: “What are they really after?”
Worrying if someone’s version of doing good is better than yours (“I can’t compete with that”), or hating how someone’s version is worse: “Why don’t they try harder?”
Not knowing if you even want to do good: “I don’t think it’s in my best interest,” “It hasn’t worked for me in the past,” or “I don’t see the reason anymore,” or “I don’t need to add one more thing into my life.”
God loves you. God loves you and knows that your natural inclination is to get weary in general, and to lack motivation. Fortunately, there’s hope here. This same passage from Galatians suggests a surprising amount of agency given to Christ-followers: “A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7-8) There’s a lot of good God’s people can and should do if there’s focus. You can sow a focused 1900-lb sports car, or a bloated two-ton luxury land yacht. You just need to be faithful to what God wants from you.
Author and theologian George Mueller describes it this way: “Christians do not practically remember that while we are saved by grace, altogether by grace, so that in the matter of salvation works are altogether excluded; yet that so far as the rewards of grace are concerned, in the world to come, there is an intimate connection between the life of the Christian here and the enjoyment and the glory in the day of Christ’s appearing.”
Weariness is no match for a group of Christ-followers focused on the same goal of doing good out of response to God’s goodness. God’s people would all do well to remember that.
Lotus recently ended production of its Elise, for now. Its replacement will almost certainly come with hybrid power, but also more creature comforts too. Because if you’ve ever tried to drive one of these things for more than a couple hours, you know how wearying it can be.
