Thought, word, and deed.

Once a mentor of mine who shall remain nameless, but will be revealed by the example I give said something to me and couple others regarding the title above and its application to life.  On the plus side, he did not say anything bad about it, just how it relates to certain spiritual beliefs that I cannot prove or disprove.  He said, “Jewish people are lucky because our religion only cares about word and deed.  You Christians have thought to worry about.”  Like I said, I do not know if this is correct or not and frankly, it does not have to be to be amusing.  Onto the topic though!

                Immediately we can toss “word” in with “deed” because saying things is an action and can thus be considered a deed.  That makes for a very short paragraph on the topic eh?  “Word” is out…  That leaves us with “thought” and “deed” which I shall refer to as “intent” and “action” ok?   Word! >.>

                I was thinking about “intent” versus “action” today because they are different beasts and here are some things that I came up with:

1.       Good intent may lead to good or bad actions.

2.       Bad intent almost always leads to bad actions.

3.       When a bad action occurs I tend to judge the event based on the intent.

4.       When a good action occurs people tend to not think about the intent.

                I think my obsession with “intent” and “action” as they equate to results is based on the fact that 99% of my intentions are good.  And of those 99% good intentions the results are mostly not the desired one.  “The path to hell is paved with good intent” or so they say, but I refuse to believe that “intent” is that worthless unless one does not act on it.  Who can truly say with 100% accuracy what the given consequences of any action are?  And must we be so results driven that we fail to see the value of a golden heart?  For the record, I am not throwing a pity party here or questioning someone’s judgment of me.  It is pure pondering.  But…to get back on track it takes many failures before a stroke of genius yields something spectacular, so why not appreciate good intent with risk in the hope that some miracle occurs as opposed to “play-it-safe” actions?  Just a thought.  ;-)