Carrot and Stick...

June 21, 2009

Danielle Joyner Kelley

“But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." Joshua 24:15.

When people hear the word “religion” many of them feel fear. There is something about some religious messages that make people think of times gone by and scare them to death.

I know because I was one of them. I spent years trying to understand and learn about God in the manner in which I was being taught. For some reason, I could not. The more I tried, the worse everything got.

Finally, I understood that the way I was being taught was not the way to truly understand Him. Instruction manuals often come in different languages, and although I understand the English ones, I will not understand the ones in French. That does not mean that those who speak French will not understand them, but I will not.

There are many reasons for this, but the most important one is that I was relying solely on man to teach me how to understand God. While I was not going to God and asking for His understanding, I was allowing man to define the boundaries in which I would attempt to get to know Him. That was disastrous for me.

Luckily, God takes our negative experiences and turns them into a positive. He is not willing to allow any confusion, struggle, or pain on my part to take place in vain. When I came to Him purely in His name seeking answers, He provided me with them, and also gave me discernment and wisdom that man alone could never possess.

Now, through my experience I have learned two totally different approaches to religion. Both are completely different and often hard to realize the concept behind. To me they are best summarized as one being a “carrot” and the other a “stick”. Both have their followers, and each one has its own way of reaching people. Most important, they should, and often do, have the same goal.

In Old Testament times, God’s Spirit dwelled in the “Holy of Holies” in the Temple in Jerusalem. After Christ’s death and resurrection, His Spirit dwells inside of us as Christians. This is why you will frequently hear that “our body is the temple”.

The “stick” approach to religion uses this to make sure you keep it Holy, and the other recognizes the enormous task the Spirit is taking on to keep it Holy. In short, the “carrot” approach believes that the Holy Spirit will go to work to flush out the bad within the person’s soul, and the “stick” approach believes it is their job to remove all the bad.

The approach that worked best for me was the “carrot”. I have a tendency to fight things that people tell me to do, and when you are beating me with a stick I will usually rebel. Many people do rebel against what they are told they must do, or what we call the “law”.

The “carrot” approach instills a trust in me that allows me to walk under grace and not law. The Apostle Paul tells us that we are not “under law, but under grace”. Romans 6:14. Our human nature is prone to sin; therefore we are likely to rebel against the law. A message of love and God’s grace makes a lot of us more willing to step up and do right by God because we want to honor Him for loving us so much that He sent His Son to die for us. Now we are under grace, and we all should love God enough to do what is right, instead of living to rebel against the law itself. “For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.” Romans 6:14.

There is a down side to this approach. Many will use it as an excuse to sin. Because we are forgiven for our sins through God’s grace which allowed His Son to die because of His love for us, many will use the argument that we are forgiven no matter what we do wrong. This is the famous “saved by grace, not by works” scripture. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9.

Yes, we can be forgiven, there is no doubt. If I say that is wrong then I am doubting God’s grace and saying that He had an ulterior motive in sending Jesus, and that I will never do. However, God’s grace which allowed you to be forgiven because He loves you and not because of anything you have done is not a permission slip to sin. It is a calling to show others the fact that at the time you accepted Christ and the Holy Spirit came to live in you and your body became the temple, that you are striving to live a Christ-like life. Although we can never be like He was because He is holy and perfect, we must try as hard as we can to be. “A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” Luke 6:40. We must not try to be like Him because we fear losing forgiveness because that will not happen due to God’s grace, but instead we are to strive to be like Him because God loved us that much and we must show Him the same love in return.

To illustrate, picture yourself as a parent. You go to work every day and work hard to pay for a house for your family to live in. When you come home from work one day you notice the entire house is clean and sparkling. At that moment your oldest child runs up and tells you that he did it. As soon as you start to wonder why, he tells you that he did it because you work so hard to provide for the family and he wanted to show you how much he loved you in return. Stop and think about the honor and thankfulness that you feel.

Now imagine that you asked him to clean the entire house beforehand. Does that take away from it? Would you not have the excuse that he only cleaned the house because you told him to? Then you will think he was only doing what you asked. How much more does it mean that he did it to show you out of his own heart how he felt about what you do? In the first example he did it while walking under grace. In the second he cleaned because he was under law, your instruction to clean.

The “stick” approach is very different. I was raised under this approach in churches I went to while experiencing the “carrot” approach in my elementary school. The combination of both led me on a path of confusion and misunderstandings.

In the “stick” approach you are told the law and what you can and cannot do. If you break those commands you are hit with a “stick” so to speak, and feel as if you are not only subject to the judgment of a wrathful God you have been taught about, but you feel that you will stand in judgment of your church as well. The end result for me was to worry about what others were thinking for fear of embarrassment here on Earth and less about the embarrassment I would face later. This became by “here and now” mentality and I ended up trying to please man and abandoning the God I blamed for putting me in this position. Put simply, I rebelled against the law. I was told what not to do and wanted to do it for man, which is contrary to what God tells me to do and that is to work for Him and not work to please man or myself.

This approach literally puts the fear of God in you. Although it did not work as well on me, I can say it does work for some who are more in line with organization and bright line rules. If those people are not breaking the rules while their eyes are on God, then it is perhaps the way they should have come to Him. However, if they are doing or not doing things with the intent of pleasing man and risking their own embarrassment, then pleasing man is what they wanted and all the reward they will get. Why should God honor anything anyone does with their eyes on man’s approval? We have to remember God looks at the motives and the heart. It is not necessarily what you do, but why you are doing it. "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Matthew 6:1. If you do something to look good for man, “to be seen by them”, then man will think you are good. You did not act for God, so what reward should you get from Him? Are you really giving money to charity for the cause or for a tax write off? It is the “why” of the “what” you are doing that counts.

This is in no way to say that we should not fear God. We should. As humans, we respect whom and what we fear. You walk in line better in front of something you fear than something you do not. If you had no fear of accountability to God, then why would you ever do right by Him? Some people need this approach. I will be the first to admit that some people need to be scared to get the true point.

In order to succeed both approaches need to keep the same goal in sight. The goal is to make sure people are in line with God’s word, living as a temple as a body of Christ, and giving praise to God for His grace.

As a Christian who is truly feeling the temple aspect, and the Holy Spirit at work thanks to the “carrot” approach, I can say that I do not need anyone to tell me what to do or not to do. I do not chose to do so either. This is not because it is not important, but because I have seen more success in ministering to others about God’s love and grace, planting the seed in them, and then watching the Holy Spirit take over. The “stick” approach took my personality by storm although it will benefit others, and gave me a reason to follow man. Once I was approached with the “carrot” I truly understood God’s grace.

As humans, we are prone to sin. Our nature is prone to do exactly what we should not do in any given situation. Because of this fact, man will tell you what you can and cannot do to change your behavior. From my perspective, man does not have to. If someone is truly walking with the Spirit, the Holy Spirit is doing His job and man cannot do it for Him.

For example, when I was learning the “stick” approach and would commit a sin I worried about what man would do to me. I hated embarrassment and still do. The “carrot” approach allowed me to see what it is like to truly live under grace, and do right by God because He absolutely deserves no less. He never gives me less than His absolute best, why should He expect less from me? Now when I sin there is a Holy Spirit inside of me that will deal with me about the sin, and man is not someone I worry about judging me. Jesus told us that when He left He would ask the Father to send us the “Spirit of Truth” to be with us forever. John 14:16-17. The Holy Spirit came to us through our acceptance of Christ and He has many tasks to perform through us and in us. He will convict us of guilt (John 16:8); testify about Jesus to us (John 15:26); and guide us into all truth (John 16:13). What can man do better than that?

For both approaches, people should remember the fact that Jesus told us the Holy Spirit would convict us of guilt. If I sin, man does not need to tell me, I am already being convicted by the Spirit, and through my love and faith in God I will have no choice but to obey His conviction.

For those in the beginning stages of Christianity, a conviction is easy to recognize. This is that little voice inside of you telling you not to do something or that you should not have done something. If you continue in your action, the voice becomes louder and lets you know there will be consequences. He shows you past life experiences as examples of what can happen if your behavior continues, and then you see the result. When you feel the conviction and then reshape your behavior that is when you are truly working for God and not for man. You are doing it at that moment because the Holy Spirit is showing you the consequence, or telling you what to do, and not because man told you what not to do.

This relationship is what God truly wanted for us. He told us over and over that he desired “mercy not sacrifice”. Hosea 6:6. We all have to remember that God is looking at the motives and the heart’s intention. “All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart.” Proverbs 21:2.

In Old Testament times, God saw people showing up to the temple and reciting scripture without truly feeling it in their heart. They were doing what they had been told and taught to do by man. Jesus called this for what it was. "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” Matthew 23:23.

Do not just sacrifice for God in front of man by going to church or showing others how much you know about Him. Make sure you are showing true mercy in dealing with people personally in your own life. To understand the true meaning of what you must do, you have to have a relationship with God on a personal level.

I will be the first to tell you as a child faced with the “stick” approach I was working to please man, and I went to church every Sunday because I was told I had to. The “carrot” approach showed me the benefits of a church family with no condemnation if I did not go. They planted the seed, and the Holy Spirit took over. Now I go every Sunday not because I fear man, but because the Holy Spirit knows I need it to get through the week. Jesus knew there were people in the temple all the time that had the wrong idea and motive, and that is why He told us as much. If the Holy Spirit tells you to go, please go. If you go with the right motive and find the right place, the Spirit will guide you to people and paths that are vital to you staying on your walk with God.

Now that the Holy Spirit is working in my life, I can tell you that every time I did something to please man or acted unmercifully to someone else, I have had to answer for. That is the beauty of His convictions. If man made me answer for my past, I would have been resentful. The Holy Spirit seeks to make me better, not to embarrass me. It may take embarrassment to get the point, but His motives are holy and pure. I am now under grace, not law.

When the Holy Spirit convicts you of an issue, share your testimony. Tell others how it happened and what you did, but do not expect to be able to convict others unless the Spirit tells you to. When you try to convict others yourself, you are playing as if you are the Holy Spirit, and you cannot be. Always remember your convictions are just that, your convictions. We will all be convicted differently because we have different personalities, weaknesses, and past experiences. We will sin in different ways. The point of not sinning is not to allow the devil to get a foothold over you. Remember, he knows your past and weaknesses too, and he will use them against you in different ways to get you to fall. Getting you to fall depends on who you are as an individual. This is precisely why we are not to judge others and only God can. We do not know what they have been through, but He does.

Always remember that no matter what the goal is to allow the Holy Spirit to work through you. You are God’s hands and feet here on Earth. Never let man define what that experience should be like, instead strive to experience it for yourself with the goal to share it with others in the hopes that it will help those like you and not make people like you.

Finally, remember that what your Teacher wants is all that matters. As for me and my house? We will serve the Lord.