GETTING OUR ACT TOGETHER
I don’t believe the ‘act’ will get together until we get ourselves together. The act can’t change until we do. It is getting us together for the act. I have tried this both ways: getting my act together before getting myself together and getting myself together and then working on my act. It is always the person before the act.
If we do not work from the order of the person first, we build acts and dreams that are not character based in goodness, fairness and kindness. The act may come together in deceit, lying, manipulation and dishonest gain without personal gathering of self-control and discipline. To only build the act and not the person is a fake, phony, only for show and profit act being built.
No one can say how to get your act together as forcefully as Jesus:
“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence! You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish and then the outside will become clean, too.
“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Jesus