No man is an island: Pastor Bill Morris, Shellharbour PDF Print E-mail
Written by Bill Morris   
Sunday, 15 February 2009 16:13
I had managed to dodge her on my lunchtime trip into the shopping mall but on the way back out she approached me and asked if I had a few moments.  I had summed her up on the way in:  blonde dreadlocks, “hippy style” jeans and T-shirt, bandana on her head, surprisingly no visible tattoos, no facial bling or make-up, with a clipboard and pen in hand.  Inevitably, I figured it was money she was after but for what cause I couldn’t tell.  I agreed to listen to her since it was too early to go back to work.  Amnesty International (AI), she claimed, is the oldest human rights organisation in the world.  She rattled off statistics and sad stories about human rights abuse in various parts of the world, particularly in Africa, and about how AI made a difference in lobbying governments to make positive changes.  I listened patiently, asking a few relevant questions.  Then the crunch came; would I sign up for six dollars a week?  

I decided it was my turn.  I told her that I’m a pastor and, while I admitted that there has been much abuse in the name of God and religion, that the church is actually the oldest “human rights organisation”.  Though AI’s intent is noble and they can change people’s circumstances, unless they change people’s hearts, they fail to follow the task of world-wide change to its fullest extent.  You know the saying:  give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.  But only an encounter with God can change people’s hearts to effect permanent change.  Getting right with God is the only true way we can stop abuse of so-called human rights.

Our brief conversation started me thinking.  What had made this young woman a zealot for the AI cause?  What life-path had she followed to end up talking to me at the shopping mall about human rights?  There must have been people that influenced her life decisions: parent, siblings, teachers, fellow students, work colleagues.

Interaction with other people has an effect on us each and every day.  I have noted that many married couples end up with identical values.  Did they start that way?  Is that what drew them to each other or did they influence and change each other over the years?  I think it’s a bit of both but mainly the latter:  we influence each other for better or worse.

Proverbs 22:24-25 KJV  Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go:  Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.

We become like those we hang out with.  We influence one another.  I believe it was John Donne who penned the words:  “No man is an island, alone unto himself”.  The things I say and do affect and influence you.  The things you say and do affect and influence me.  I am influencing you right now with this article, even though you aren’t here with me as I write.  

When I left school in 1972, I didn’t become a motorbike riding rev-head overnight.  My friends and I influenced each other. No-one “is in with the wrong crowd”.  He is part of the wrong crowd himself.  Nearly all my mates started on a 250 or 350 cc Japanese bike.  I started with a 1972 Honda CB 350 twin.  Within a few years nearly everyone had influenced each other into riding a new Honda 750/4 or a Kawasaki 900...except me.  I rode a 1968 Triumph 650 Bonneville.  Although I was one of the few odd one out, soon a new and greater influence created a huge gap with my mates.  I gave my life to the Lord in 1981,  I began to attend church and my values began to change.  My thinking began to change.  My words and actions began to change.  I no longer hung out with my old friends. Maybe I should write a book titled “From rev-head to Reverend”!

2Co 5:17 KJV  Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2Co 10:5 KJV  Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Fellowship is incredibly important for our walk with God:  first, fellowship with Him as we pray and read His Word, then fellowship with each other.  My mates and I in the world had influenced each other, now the Word of God and the people of God have an effect on my life.  We are members of His body, called to be one, together influencing those around us, first, in the church and then, those in the world.

Hebrews 10:24-25 KJV  And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:  Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

Proverbs 27:17 KJV  Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

1Corinthians 12:14-26 (abbreviated)  For the body is not one member, but many...but God hath tempered the body together...That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.  And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.

We see that throughout Scripture, the decisions people made affected the lives of those around them.  Look at Noah:  only his descendants are alive today.  Look at Achan:  he caused the death of some of his comrades-in-arms and perhaps even the death of his children with him.  Look at David’s son Absalom and the effect he had on his family and nation.  Look at the world today and see how one person can change the world:  Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Bill Gates, Osama Bin Laden.  These are men that affected the past century for either evil or good.  But they did not grow up in isolation: they grew up in families, communities, cultures and nations. They were influenced by those present and those past.  And they in turn influenced those present and those future.

John Donne was right:  No man is an island, alone unto himself.  Remember our every action has a consequence as we affect and influence each other for better or for worse.  Though once I didn’t understand this principle or perhaps didn’t even care, today I consciously choose “better”!  Let my decisions, my actions, my words, be those that influence the saints of God to strive harder, higher for the Lord.  Let my decisions, my actions, my words, influence those that don’t yet know the Lord, to seek Him while there is time.  How will you and I affect those around us in this century and for eternity: for evil or for good?  I choose “good”.

Col 1:10 KJV  That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;
Last Updated ( Sunday, 15 February 2009 16:16 )