Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew 6:25-26
In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat - for while they sleep he provides for those he loves. Psalm 127:2
Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. Proverbs 23:4
For overachievers, hell on earth must be an hourly-wage job. A company policy against overtime keeps them from their obsession do more and better. There probably are some misplaced overachievers here and there in the hourly workforce, but I bet that most often, if an overachiever is in an hourly-wage job, it is stepping stone to something less restrictive. I think of overachievers as typically being in salaried or commissioned positions, or self-employed - a work arrangement from which they can reap some positive reinforcement for their obsession.
Maybe I'm being harsh on overachievers to say they are obsessed. I do believe there are seasons in a person's life that are prime for high productivity and if we have the God fortune to find ourselves in such a time and engaged in an activity for which we are well-suited, we should go for it! Produce, produce produce! However, many an overachiever cannot discern when they are in such a season - they think any season is prime for production. Consequently, there are those who neglect sleep, their health, finding a spouse, or if they found one, neglect the spouse and their children, God, family and even the dog just to get in one more sales call or finish one more chapter or check the balance sheet one more time. Being busy fulfills them. Perhaps they think they are living out Solomon's best case scenario: eat, drink and find satisfaction in work for the few days God has given us (Ecclesiastes 5:18). But look what else Solomon said: "In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat," and "Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint." When we juxtapose these scriptures to a 16-hour work day, overachieving does seem to be a mental ill - an obsession.
Solomon wasn't addressing everyone in these verses, because not everyone has this problem. Many have the opposite problem and to those, he said things like, "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man" (Proverbs 6:10-11). And then there are those who have found the middle way - balance. I venture to say that working an hourly-wage job is conducive to having balance in your life. When the "whistle blows," it is quitting time and off you go to enjoy life outside of work, which usually bears no resemblance to work.
So this entry goes out to all my self-employed, salaried or commissioned homies who aren't calling it a day at the blow of a whistle: Show some restraint. Set yourself a work schedule and, against every fiber of your obsessed being, stop working when quitting time comes. Turn the phone off. Take the wife to dinner. Make every soccer and t-ball game - the season is short. Take a Sabbath (that's once a week, BTW). Take a vacation. Celebrate the holiday, all day.
Easy for me to say, right? Actually, no, it isn't. I struggle almost every night to make dinner while there are still people at the table. I work at night, making it particularly hard for me to call it quits and go to bed on time. I've made great strides in this regard, however. Some years ago, I would work until the wee hours of the morning, now I rarely work past 11 p.m. But my bedtime is 10 p.m. (to get eight hours of sleep), so I have a ways to go.
Jesus (kind of) said life is more important than being able to sport Rolex and Armani and eat at five-star establishments. Yes, but for many an overachiever, Rolex and Armani aren't even on the radar. We're just overachieving for the heck of it - not even really seeing any wealth or prosperity as a result. How much more vain is that! Then there's the overachieving minister. This is the hardest nut to crack because he feels his obsession is sanctioned by God Himself. He's doing the Lord's work, so it is OK to abandon all restraint. After all, the fields are ripe for harvest and the laborers are few. We've got to make hay while the sun still shines! If we go to bed now, a soul could remain lost as a result.
Newsflash: We are expendable; God can call a lost soul to Himself in some other way if we take the day off. And we are no exceptionl; the commandment to rest on the Sabbath was meant even for the men and women in God's service. Just because we're in the family business does not mean the policy manual does not apply to us. Even Jesus observed the Sabbath and holidays, and every once in a while, He just got away from it all to refresh and renew. He had only three years to minister to all of humanity. Surely our deadlines and sales goals pale in comparison.
Contemplate this: Have I allowed work to overstep its rightful role in my life?
Showing posts with label Make all you can. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Make all you can. Show all posts
Friday, May 14, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
The Tax Collector in Me
Tax collectors also came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"
"Don't collect any more than you are required to."
Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?"
He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely - be content with your pay." Luke 3:12-14
You gotta love John the Baptist. He pulls no punches. There's no beating around the bush when he's asked by these notorious lots, "What are we doing wrong?" In one sentence, he pierces the heart of the matter. We're not tax collectors and soldiers, but these words are penetrating for us as well, if we will just reflect for a moment on how this spirit of extortion creeps into our daily life and existence.
From the hourly employee all the way to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, there is room for extortion at our workplace. The devil has made sure of it. The hourly burger flipper can do time clock tricks that gain him 15 minutes here or there, he can spend time on the clock in the bathroom, contemplating his navel, he can stuff fries in his mouth when no one is looking and who's going to notice if he slips a Happy Meal toy out for his nephew? For a list of possible CEO and upper management abuses, just review the history of the fallen Enron executives, among many others.
Corporate greed happens in small businesses too. I'm self-employed, so I have no boss or stockholders to cheat, but I can sure jip my clients if I wanted to. I can do substandard work that I know will be enough for them, but not to my best ability. I can fudge on the time a task took me if I am working for hourly pay. Even if my contracts are watertight, I can always find some way to make a business expense out of a personal expense. Going to visit Mom the next state over? I'll just stop into a bookstore while I'm there and drop off a business card. Now the whole trip is a "legitimate" business expense.
I don't consider either of my parents to be the kind of people who are always looking to make a buck any way possible. In fact, they are both generous to a fault. So where does this propensity in me com from, to always be thinking of ways to weasel money? It is culturally pervasive, either overtly or as evidenced by the many controls to keep this money-weaseling nature in check, and moreover, it is just human nature.
Those who have had the experience of traveling off the tourist track in just about any Latin American country can tell you that bribery and extortion are practically institutionalized. There's no minor infraction of the law that can't be settled by slipping the officer a 20. Big trouble costs more. When I first saw this in action while I was in the Peace Corps, I was appalled. I quickly concluded that the whole system was corrupt and their justice was no justice at all if supported by bribery and extortion. It is so easy to see the splinter in the Ecuadorean's eye! If I turn my scrutinizing eye to my own countrymen, however, I have to hang my head in shame for Americans too. Whereas dishonest gain is outlawed and frowned upon, it certainly is as strong a nature in our culture, as evidenced by the many prohibitions, policies and procedures and technologies - everything from the time clock to the retina scanner - that we have in place to deal with it.
And if I look inward... shame on me. Not everyone struggles equally with every kind of sin. You may well be the kind of person who is always on the up and up and never trying to better yourself with office freebies, legitimized business expenses and extended bathroom breaks. The only way to know for sure is to pay some attention to yourself in this matter. Keep a watchful inward eye for the propensity to get more than is rightfully coming to you and you might be surprised at how natural an inclination this is.
What should we do? Be content with our pay.
Contemplate this: Am I justifying my sin nature to claim more than is due me?
"Don't collect any more than you are required to."
Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?"
He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely - be content with your pay." Luke 3:12-14
You gotta love John the Baptist. He pulls no punches. There's no beating around the bush when he's asked by these notorious lots, "What are we doing wrong?" In one sentence, he pierces the heart of the matter. We're not tax collectors and soldiers, but these words are penetrating for us as well, if we will just reflect for a moment on how this spirit of extortion creeps into our daily life and existence.
From the hourly employee all the way to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, there is room for extortion at our workplace. The devil has made sure of it. The hourly burger flipper can do time clock tricks that gain him 15 minutes here or there, he can spend time on the clock in the bathroom, contemplating his navel, he can stuff fries in his mouth when no one is looking and who's going to notice if he slips a Happy Meal toy out for his nephew? For a list of possible CEO and upper management abuses, just review the history of the fallen Enron executives, among many others.
Corporate greed happens in small businesses too. I'm self-employed, so I have no boss or stockholders to cheat, but I can sure jip my clients if I wanted to. I can do substandard work that I know will be enough for them, but not to my best ability. I can fudge on the time a task took me if I am working for hourly pay. Even if my contracts are watertight, I can always find some way to make a business expense out of a personal expense. Going to visit Mom the next state over? I'll just stop into a bookstore while I'm there and drop off a business card. Now the whole trip is a "legitimate" business expense.
I don't consider either of my parents to be the kind of people who are always looking to make a buck any way possible. In fact, they are both generous to a fault. So where does this propensity in me com from, to always be thinking of ways to weasel money? It is culturally pervasive, either overtly or as evidenced by the many controls to keep this money-weaseling nature in check, and moreover, it is just human nature.
Those who have had the experience of traveling off the tourist track in just about any Latin American country can tell you that bribery and extortion are practically institutionalized. There's no minor infraction of the law that can't be settled by slipping the officer a 20. Big trouble costs more. When I first saw this in action while I was in the Peace Corps, I was appalled. I quickly concluded that the whole system was corrupt and their justice was no justice at all if supported by bribery and extortion. It is so easy to see the splinter in the Ecuadorean's eye! If I turn my scrutinizing eye to my own countrymen, however, I have to hang my head in shame for Americans too. Whereas dishonest gain is outlawed and frowned upon, it certainly is as strong a nature in our culture, as evidenced by the many prohibitions, policies and procedures and technologies - everything from the time clock to the retina scanner - that we have in place to deal with it.
And if I look inward... shame on me. Not everyone struggles equally with every kind of sin. You may well be the kind of person who is always on the up and up and never trying to better yourself with office freebies, legitimized business expenses and extended bathroom breaks. The only way to know for sure is to pay some attention to yourself in this matter. Keep a watchful inward eye for the propensity to get more than is rightfully coming to you and you might be surprised at how natural an inclination this is.
What should we do? Be content with our pay.
Contemplate this: Am I justifying my sin nature to claim more than is due me?
Saturday, January 9, 2010
One Wrong + One Right Does Not Make a Right Either
Better a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice. Proverbs 16:8
Have you ever priced a hearing aid? These tiny electrical gadgets, some small enough to fit completely in the ear without being seen, range in cost from $1000 to $4000. I feel sure that no hearing aid manufacturer would make this information public, but I bet the raw materials on each hearing aid cost about 25 cents. A say this based on the fact that I can purchase an AM/FM radio in the dollar store (the one where everything costs a dollar). Hearing aids are made with the same raw materials as that radio, but fewer of them. As editor of a magazine for people with hearing loss, I know the industry rationale for the other $999.75 worth of cost on even the basic model: research and development. It is true that there are many scientists and engineers working on improving the quality of hearing with amplification. It’s also true that all of the major hearing aid manufacturers not only spend hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising their products to audiologists and hearing aid dispensers, and have nice profit margins, they each also have a philanthropic spin-off organization or at least, some sort of philanthropic program within the company.
This is a pretty common thing among large corporations, and in fact, many people are influenced in their purchasing decisions by whether or not the company in some way “gives back” to the community or the world. I like to eat small, compressed wheat rectangles for breakfast. Recently, one producer of this type of cereal advertised that they are giving away a million bowls of cereal. My purchase of said cereal is going to generate another free bowl of cereal for some hungry kid. “Good!” I think. “That’s nice. If only all corporations would give back in this manner, the world would be a better place.”
Then it dawns on me that if I weren’t be overcharged for my bowl of cereal, Post company wouldn’t have a margin of profit so far above its shareholder expectations that it is able to give away a million bowls of cereal without ticking off the shareholders, cutting back on salaries or advertising, or even lowering office thermostat in winter. The same is true about hearing aid companies. Should I feel good that Starkey Hearing Foundation gives away on average 38,000 hearing aids each year at the expense of those honest hard of hearing folk who bought one of their products?
According to a 2009 Consumer Report, hearing aids are marked up on average 117 percent after all the costs of materials, research and development, advertising and professional services rendered by audiologists are taken into account. That’s a free-market economy at work. Consumers will pay it so companies can charge it. But I have to ask: In all this economic theory played out, where is justice? Oh, right, it’s in those one million bowls of free cereal and in the 38,000 hearing aids a year that the company is giving away. In my opinion, that is dissociated, post-coital justice: an attempt to make things right with a third party after having screwed your customer. Here’s a radical idea: Why not offer the product at a price where the margin of profit is not obscene? Post Shredded Wheat cost $2.98 at my local supermarket. If they adjusted their price so that they couldn’t afford to create a philanthropic program to feed a million, I bet more of America’s truly poor people could afford to buy it. Then those poor people wouldn’t need to stand in a bread line in front of some social services organization to get their free bowl of cereal. And if you think I’m harshing on Post, you should know that their bite-size wheat cereal costs almost a dollar less than the same product under the Kellogg brand.
And yet, it seems an almost insurmountable feat to radically lower the price of cereal, not to mention hearing aids. It would shake the industry if Post or Starkey started pricing their products with a modest profit margin. It could topple the economy! I fully recognize that it’s not just as easy as deciding to do the right thing when it comes to large corporations that are industry leaders. I also fully recognize that those corporations are made up of individuals who will be held accountable by a just God for their daily decisions.
But while I’m pointing the finger at large corporations and the individuals who run them, I should note the three fingers pointing back at me. First of all, I could well be a shareholder of one such company. I have no idea if I am or not. As I’ve mention in a previous post, our global economy and the convoluted way in which we invest money today, through funds, is a huge barrier to tracing my investment dollar and its impact on society. I could be part of the problem! Secondly, small businesses employ over half of private sector employees in the United States in approximately 29.6 million small businesses, according to the Office of Advocacy, which means small businesses play an important role in the economy and also have ample opportunity to justly or unjustly price products and services. Thirdly (the pinky finger), what am I doing as a consumer to let large corporations know that I’d prefer that they price justly, enabling more people to afford their products and services, than to overprice and then scrape off some of their crumbs to the poor, perpetuating a “welfare mentality”?
Contemplate this: Am I economically supporting, philosophically endorsing or perhaps even actively participating in unjust gain?
Have you ever priced a hearing aid? These tiny electrical gadgets, some small enough to fit completely in the ear without being seen, range in cost from $1000 to $4000. I feel sure that no hearing aid manufacturer would make this information public, but I bet the raw materials on each hearing aid cost about 25 cents. A say this based on the fact that I can purchase an AM/FM radio in the dollar store (the one where everything costs a dollar). Hearing aids are made with the same raw materials as that radio, but fewer of them. As editor of a magazine for people with hearing loss, I know the industry rationale for the other $999.75 worth of cost on even the basic model: research and development. It is true that there are many scientists and engineers working on improving the quality of hearing with amplification. It’s also true that all of the major hearing aid manufacturers not only spend hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising their products to audiologists and hearing aid dispensers, and have nice profit margins, they each also have a philanthropic spin-off organization or at least, some sort of philanthropic program within the company.
This is a pretty common thing among large corporations, and in fact, many people are influenced in their purchasing decisions by whether or not the company in some way “gives back” to the community or the world. I like to eat small, compressed wheat rectangles for breakfast. Recently, one producer of this type of cereal advertised that they are giving away a million bowls of cereal. My purchase of said cereal is going to generate another free bowl of cereal for some hungry kid. “Good!” I think. “That’s nice. If only all corporations would give back in this manner, the world would be a better place.”
Then it dawns on me that if I weren’t be overcharged for my bowl of cereal, Post company wouldn’t have a margin of profit so far above its shareholder expectations that it is able to give away a million bowls of cereal without ticking off the shareholders, cutting back on salaries or advertising, or even lowering office thermostat in winter. The same is true about hearing aid companies. Should I feel good that Starkey Hearing Foundation gives away on average 38,000 hearing aids each year at the expense of those honest hard of hearing folk who bought one of their products?
According to a 2009 Consumer Report, hearing aids are marked up on average 117 percent after all the costs of materials, research and development, advertising and professional services rendered by audiologists are taken into account. That’s a free-market economy at work. Consumers will pay it so companies can charge it. But I have to ask: In all this economic theory played out, where is justice? Oh, right, it’s in those one million bowls of free cereal and in the 38,000 hearing aids a year that the company is giving away. In my opinion, that is dissociated, post-coital justice: an attempt to make things right with a third party after having screwed your customer. Here’s a radical idea: Why not offer the product at a price where the margin of profit is not obscene? Post Shredded Wheat cost $2.98 at my local supermarket. If they adjusted their price so that they couldn’t afford to create a philanthropic program to feed a million, I bet more of America’s truly poor people could afford to buy it. Then those poor people wouldn’t need to stand in a bread line in front of some social services organization to get their free bowl of cereal. And if you think I’m harshing on Post, you should know that their bite-size wheat cereal costs almost a dollar less than the same product under the Kellogg brand.
And yet, it seems an almost insurmountable feat to radically lower the price of cereal, not to mention hearing aids. It would shake the industry if Post or Starkey started pricing their products with a modest profit margin. It could topple the economy! I fully recognize that it’s not just as easy as deciding to do the right thing when it comes to large corporations that are industry leaders. I also fully recognize that those corporations are made up of individuals who will be held accountable by a just God for their daily decisions.
But while I’m pointing the finger at large corporations and the individuals who run them, I should note the three fingers pointing back at me. First of all, I could well be a shareholder of one such company. I have no idea if I am or not. As I’ve mention in a previous post, our global economy and the convoluted way in which we invest money today, through funds, is a huge barrier to tracing my investment dollar and its impact on society. I could be part of the problem! Secondly, small businesses employ over half of private sector employees in the United States in approximately 29.6 million small businesses, according to the Office of Advocacy, which means small businesses play an important role in the economy and also have ample opportunity to justly or unjustly price products and services. Thirdly (the pinky finger), what am I doing as a consumer to let large corporations know that I’d prefer that they price justly, enabling more people to afford their products and services, than to overprice and then scrape off some of their crumbs to the poor, perpetuating a “welfare mentality”?
Contemplate this: Am I economically supporting, philosophically endorsing or perhaps even actively participating in unjust gain?
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
1001 Ecuadorean Lies and Other Tales
Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light. Do not have two differing measures in your house—one large, one small. You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. For the Lord your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly.
Deuteronomy 25:13-16
If God is the same yesterday, today and forever, then guess what – He still detests anyone who deals dishonestly. This is such a strong statement that even though I have the Bible backing me, it’s hard to make. God detests certain people. In this day of “hate the sin, love the sinner,” it just doesn’t seem right to say God detests certain people. And especially for something as common as dishonesty!
While I was in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, I learned a good deal about honesty and its polar opposite, dishonesty. When I arrived there, I had the notion that a person was either honest or dishonest and never the two qualities could mix – like oil and water. Either you are an honest person or you are not, and therefore, you are a dishonest person. What I came to understand over some months was that though honesty and dishonesty are polar opposites, the distance between them is bridged by a continuum, and depending where on this spectrum a person “resides,” he or she has some measure of honesty and some measure of dishonesty. Only extremely extraordinary individuals are devoid of one or the other.
This explained a lot, like how families could open their homes to a Peace Corps volunteers in training for three months, make them part of the families, safeguard them and their possessions, and then on the last day of their stay, steal their cameras. This happened to more than one in our group of volunteers. It was like, “Oh, you’re leaving now, time for me to take what I want from your stuff.” Of course, it wasn’t like that. They didn’t come out and say it – if they had, it would have been weird, but at least understandable. Instead, the families denied any wrong doing. But it had to have been them – they were the only ones with knowledge of where the goods were and access to them. I encountered dozens more of situations in Ecuador in which people who one would swear were honest became dishonest given the right opportunity. Their honesty was situational and their dishonesty opportunistic. It happened so frequently, that I couldn’t help but think on the subject extensively. I needed to reconcile what I was seeing. It was so different from what I knew as an American. Or so it seemed.
Stealing is a big dishonest “no-no” for Americans. We’re really sensitive about it. I can remember feeling a lot of guilt for stealing a piece of five-cent candy from an ice cream parlor when I was about nine years old. I don’t think I ever told anyone I did it, but I knew it was wrong because of our strong cultural value that stealing is wrong. In Ecuador, the values on stealing are different. Stealing is probably still wrong, but it can be justified, particularly in the face of economic injustice. This will make sense to you if you think of a poor urchin child stealing a piece of bread to have something to eat. It’s wrong; but who of us would not pay for the bread to exonerate the child and let him eat it anyway? That same kernel of compassion we feel that justifies a child eating wrongly acquired bread has been cultivated in the psyche of many a person in developing countries. (Ooo. Big statement. Seems like it should be footnoted with some scholarly sources.)
That same justification for dishonesty is at work in me and you when we tell a white lie so we don’t hurt someone’s feelings. In God’s eyes, what’s the difference between a white lie and stealing a camera? I’m sure you’ve asked yourself a similar question and concluded that in God’s eyes, it’s all dishonesty – sin, the wages of which are death.
And yet, God can work through dishonesty – and has. In Exodus 1, we find the account of Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah lying about how many babies they deliver, and God seems pleased with them. In Joshua, Rahab lies to cover up for the Israelite spys, and the Bible says she was “considered righteous for what she did.” (James 2:25). Then, we see in the Bible that God can work with people who lie, even if He isn’t working through them: Abraham lied twice about Sarah being his wife. Jacob – what a liar – enough said! And even fair King David – a man after God’s own heart – was dishonest. (Do you see how the English lexicon works? David was “dishonest,” meaning he wasn’t an honest man? That hardly seems right.)
Fast forward to 2010 and there are thousands of ways for each of us to have “two sets of measures.” There are probably just as many ways to cheat the company we work for as there are to cheat our customers if we own a business. And what about cheating the government or large corporations with which we do business? And guess what? It’s our nature to think up more ways to cheat and steal.
The truth of the matter (no pun intended) is that there is no person, no not one, who is honest if honesty is the complete and total lack of dishonesty. Just like we’re all sinners, we are all liars and thieves. It’s our nature. If you have had the blessing of being a parent of a toddler, you have probably witnessed that first deception and realized (or hoped) that this was not something you taught your child. That’s right, it’s not. That’s the nature with which we’re born. Does that mean God detests us all?
With the power of Christ we can rise above our sin nature, and we must. “Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” Romans 8:12-14.
Contemplate this: Honestly, where do I currently reside on the continuum of honesty/dishonesty?
Deuteronomy 25:13-16
If God is the same yesterday, today and forever, then guess what – He still detests anyone who deals dishonestly. This is such a strong statement that even though I have the Bible backing me, it’s hard to make. God detests certain people. In this day of “hate the sin, love the sinner,” it just doesn’t seem right to say God detests certain people. And especially for something as common as dishonesty!
While I was in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, I learned a good deal about honesty and its polar opposite, dishonesty. When I arrived there, I had the notion that a person was either honest or dishonest and never the two qualities could mix – like oil and water. Either you are an honest person or you are not, and therefore, you are a dishonest person. What I came to understand over some months was that though honesty and dishonesty are polar opposites, the distance between them is bridged by a continuum, and depending where on this spectrum a person “resides,” he or she has some measure of honesty and some measure of dishonesty. Only extremely extraordinary individuals are devoid of one or the other.
This explained a lot, like how families could open their homes to a Peace Corps volunteers in training for three months, make them part of the families, safeguard them and their possessions, and then on the last day of their stay, steal their cameras. This happened to more than one in our group of volunteers. It was like, “Oh, you’re leaving now, time for me to take what I want from your stuff.” Of course, it wasn’t like that. They didn’t come out and say it – if they had, it would have been weird, but at least understandable. Instead, the families denied any wrong doing. But it had to have been them – they were the only ones with knowledge of where the goods were and access to them. I encountered dozens more of situations in Ecuador in which people who one would swear were honest became dishonest given the right opportunity. Their honesty was situational and their dishonesty opportunistic. It happened so frequently, that I couldn’t help but think on the subject extensively. I needed to reconcile what I was seeing. It was so different from what I knew as an American. Or so it seemed.
Stealing is a big dishonest “no-no” for Americans. We’re really sensitive about it. I can remember feeling a lot of guilt for stealing a piece of five-cent candy from an ice cream parlor when I was about nine years old. I don’t think I ever told anyone I did it, but I knew it was wrong because of our strong cultural value that stealing is wrong. In Ecuador, the values on stealing are different. Stealing is probably still wrong, but it can be justified, particularly in the face of economic injustice. This will make sense to you if you think of a poor urchin child stealing a piece of bread to have something to eat. It’s wrong; but who of us would not pay for the bread to exonerate the child and let him eat it anyway? That same kernel of compassion we feel that justifies a child eating wrongly acquired bread has been cultivated in the psyche of many a person in developing countries. (Ooo. Big statement. Seems like it should be footnoted with some scholarly sources.)
That same justification for dishonesty is at work in me and you when we tell a white lie so we don’t hurt someone’s feelings. In God’s eyes, what’s the difference between a white lie and stealing a camera? I’m sure you’ve asked yourself a similar question and concluded that in God’s eyes, it’s all dishonesty – sin, the wages of which are death.
And yet, God can work through dishonesty – and has. In Exodus 1, we find the account of Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah lying about how many babies they deliver, and God seems pleased with them. In Joshua, Rahab lies to cover up for the Israelite spys, and the Bible says she was “considered righteous for what she did.” (James 2:25). Then, we see in the Bible that God can work with people who lie, even if He isn’t working through them: Abraham lied twice about Sarah being his wife. Jacob – what a liar – enough said! And even fair King David – a man after God’s own heart – was dishonest. (Do you see how the English lexicon works? David was “dishonest,” meaning he wasn’t an honest man? That hardly seems right.)
Fast forward to 2010 and there are thousands of ways for each of us to have “two sets of measures.” There are probably just as many ways to cheat the company we work for as there are to cheat our customers if we own a business. And what about cheating the government or large corporations with which we do business? And guess what? It’s our nature to think up more ways to cheat and steal.
The truth of the matter (no pun intended) is that there is no person, no not one, who is honest if honesty is the complete and total lack of dishonesty. Just like we’re all sinners, we are all liars and thieves. It’s our nature. If you have had the blessing of being a parent of a toddler, you have probably witnessed that first deception and realized (or hoped) that this was not something you taught your child. That’s right, it’s not. That’s the nature with which we’re born. Does that mean God detests us all?
With the power of Christ we can rise above our sin nature, and we must. “Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” Romans 8:12-14.
Contemplate this: Honestly, where do I currently reside on the continuum of honesty/dishonesty?
Monday, November 2, 2009
For All My Efforts
Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God. You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.
Deuteronomy 8:11-14a, 17-18
Do you recall the story of how Jacob, who later became Israel, father of the nation, became wealthy? Remember after cheating his brother out of the birthright and then lying to his father to get the blessing of the first born, he took off to his uncle Laban’s house. A lot of good the birthright and blessing did him. Because of the way he went about getting them, he had to get out of Dodge and quick, for fear of the wrath of his brother. So he arrives at Uncle Laban’s with nothing and that dear fellow gave him a place to live and a dose of his own medicine.
Laban agreed to give Jacob his daughter Rachel in marriage in exchange for seven years of labor. The morning after the wedding night, Jacob realizes Uncle Laban is a cad and has given him the wrong girl, the ugly older sister, Leah. Well, too late to give her back now! So he agrees to work yet another seven years for Rachel, the one he really wanted.
During this time, Jacob realizes he’s got to get smart with Uncle Laban if he ever wants to get ahead. So he makes a deal with him: “I will go on tending your flocks and watching over them. Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages,” (Gen. 30:32). From then on, Jacob was to get all the spotted and speckled among the flocks and herds.
Now Jacob had a strategy: he took “fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted,” (Gen. 30:37-38) because as anyone in animal husbandry can tell you, if you want spotted, speckled or streaked livestock, you have to expose them to this kind of environment when they’re drinking and mating, right? He further bettered his livestock by selecting only the stronger females to expose to these gene-influencing branches. “In this way the man grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and maidservants and menservents, and camels and donkeys,” (Gen. 30:43).
So that was the secret of his success – striped braches in the watering trough. I wonder how many Israelite shepherds throughout history tried to replicate this strategy and ended up wondering why it wasn’t working for them. I suppose that it is possible that being in a certain type of environment could encourage genetic selection in favor of that environment in one generation, but any way you look at it from the perspective of our current understanding of genetics, it’s clear that what Jacob was doing had little to no bearing on the result he was getting.
And yet God certainly knew that when you and I would read this story thousands of years later, we would understand that poor Jacob was clueless and really just grasping at straws. On the other hand, he was doing something, anything, the only thing he could think of to try to become more prosperous. He was making an effort. But it was God who gave the increase because of the plan that he had for Jacob.
We might think Jacob was pretty naïve, but not so. He knew the score. He told his wives: “God has not allowed [Laban] to harm me. If he said, ‘The speckled ones will be your wages,’ then all the flocks gave birth to speckled young; and if he said, ‘The streaked ones will be your wages,’ then all the flocks bore streaked young. So God has taken away your father’s livestock and has given them to me.”
If he had made this connection, that his success was God’s doing, why would he bother peeling almond branches? I’m gonna say he did it because it was all he knew to do. Whereas he attributed God with the increase, Jacob contributed all he could as well, even it if was sheer nonsense by today’s standards.
What about your success thus far? Have your flocks and herds increased by your own efforts, or did God come along and miraculously cause the increase? Careful how you answer.
Who can explain why certain things succeed so and others do not. It’s not all about marketing – some companies spend millions of dollars on a campaign that produces no results. It’s not about talent, if that were the ticket wouldn’t ever Denzel Washington movie have been a box office hit? Perseverance? Don’t you know a starving artist who has been starving for decades? There’s something very mysterious about success, and whereas I don’t think all of it is God’s will, he’s certainly allowing every success. God is enabling our health, intelligence, relative peace so we can work, and an environment in which we can be successful – capitalist United States of America. These things are much more tenuous than we believe. From one day to the next any of it could change at God’s command. But God allows these favorable conditions so that we can produce wealth.
If anyone has their doubts about whether God disapproves of fine houses, having some silver and gold on hand, and a big successful family business, let this scripture put that question to rest. God says in his word that enabling this ability to produce wealth is how he confirms his covenant with Israel. I’m no theologian, but I think this somehow applies to us gentiles to as. Like Paul said in Galatians 3:29, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
So good! But wait, there’s a flipside to this. “If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God,” Deut. 8:19-20.
With great privilege comes great responsibility. And the privilege of wealth carries with it the responsibility of gratitude and recognition of the one Force that made it possible, at a minimum.
Contemplate this: In what ways have I seen the hand of God enabling my success in the past and present?
Deuteronomy 8:11-14a, 17-18
Do you recall the story of how Jacob, who later became Israel, father of the nation, became wealthy? Remember after cheating his brother out of the birthright and then lying to his father to get the blessing of the first born, he took off to his uncle Laban’s house. A lot of good the birthright and blessing did him. Because of the way he went about getting them, he had to get out of Dodge and quick, for fear of the wrath of his brother. So he arrives at Uncle Laban’s with nothing and that dear fellow gave him a place to live and a dose of his own medicine.
Laban agreed to give Jacob his daughter Rachel in marriage in exchange for seven years of labor. The morning after the wedding night, Jacob realizes Uncle Laban is a cad and has given him the wrong girl, the ugly older sister, Leah. Well, too late to give her back now! So he agrees to work yet another seven years for Rachel, the one he really wanted.
During this time, Jacob realizes he’s got to get smart with Uncle Laban if he ever wants to get ahead. So he makes a deal with him: “I will go on tending your flocks and watching over them. Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages,” (Gen. 30:32). From then on, Jacob was to get all the spotted and speckled among the flocks and herds.
Now Jacob had a strategy: he took “fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted,” (Gen. 30:37-38) because as anyone in animal husbandry can tell you, if you want spotted, speckled or streaked livestock, you have to expose them to this kind of environment when they’re drinking and mating, right? He further bettered his livestock by selecting only the stronger females to expose to these gene-influencing branches. “In this way the man grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and maidservants and menservents, and camels and donkeys,” (Gen. 30:43).
So that was the secret of his success – striped braches in the watering trough. I wonder how many Israelite shepherds throughout history tried to replicate this strategy and ended up wondering why it wasn’t working for them. I suppose that it is possible that being in a certain type of environment could encourage genetic selection in favor of that environment in one generation, but any way you look at it from the perspective of our current understanding of genetics, it’s clear that what Jacob was doing had little to no bearing on the result he was getting.
And yet God certainly knew that when you and I would read this story thousands of years later, we would understand that poor Jacob was clueless and really just grasping at straws. On the other hand, he was doing something, anything, the only thing he could think of to try to become more prosperous. He was making an effort. But it was God who gave the increase because of the plan that he had for Jacob.
We might think Jacob was pretty naïve, but not so. He knew the score. He told his wives: “God has not allowed [Laban] to harm me. If he said, ‘The speckled ones will be your wages,’ then all the flocks gave birth to speckled young; and if he said, ‘The streaked ones will be your wages,’ then all the flocks bore streaked young. So God has taken away your father’s livestock and has given them to me.”
If he had made this connection, that his success was God’s doing, why would he bother peeling almond branches? I’m gonna say he did it because it was all he knew to do. Whereas he attributed God with the increase, Jacob contributed all he could as well, even it if was sheer nonsense by today’s standards.
What about your success thus far? Have your flocks and herds increased by your own efforts, or did God come along and miraculously cause the increase? Careful how you answer.
Who can explain why certain things succeed so and others do not. It’s not all about marketing – some companies spend millions of dollars on a campaign that produces no results. It’s not about talent, if that were the ticket wouldn’t ever Denzel Washington movie have been a box office hit? Perseverance? Don’t you know a starving artist who has been starving for decades? There’s something very mysterious about success, and whereas I don’t think all of it is God’s will, he’s certainly allowing every success. God is enabling our health, intelligence, relative peace so we can work, and an environment in which we can be successful – capitalist United States of America. These things are much more tenuous than we believe. From one day to the next any of it could change at God’s command. But God allows these favorable conditions so that we can produce wealth.
If anyone has their doubts about whether God disapproves of fine houses, having some silver and gold on hand, and a big successful family business, let this scripture put that question to rest. God says in his word that enabling this ability to produce wealth is how he confirms his covenant with Israel. I’m no theologian, but I think this somehow applies to us gentiles to as. Like Paul said in Galatians 3:29, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
So good! But wait, there’s a flipside to this. “If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God,” Deut. 8:19-20.
With great privilege comes great responsibility. And the privilege of wealth carries with it the responsibility of gratitude and recognition of the one Force that made it possible, at a minimum.
Contemplate this: In what ways have I seen the hand of God enabling my success in the past and present?
Monday, September 21, 2009
Patience, Grasshopper
Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. Proverbs 10:4
The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied. Proverbs 13:4
OK, I sought the Kingdom of God first, now what? I’m still not a huge success – I’m ready for this to happen already!
Even a fool-proof formula for success needs time to work its “magic.” The time spent in earnest seeking God’s Kingdom daily, day after day, is a practical expression of a good character trait that is behind every true success story: diligence.
In our society which likes everything to be fast and disposable, diligence is underrated. You might think it’s non-existent, but the advances in medicine, science, technology, computers and more are evidence of diligence. I work with an organization that funds research on hearing and balance. Each year they give out 20 or more grants to scientists working on tiny little pieces of the huge puzzle “hearing and balance for everyone.” To the average person, some of these studies seem terribly insignificant. For instance, one that was funded this year seeks to quantify the mitochondrial DNA common deletion level and total deletion load in the cochlea of people with and without age-related hearing loss. (Yawn.) And this is just one of the many, many studies in progress right now that will someday complete the puzzle and yield a headline: Cure Found for Age-Related Hearing Loss! There are so many diligent researchers out there working on so many problems and we’ve seen so much measurable progress and so many remarkable breakthroughs that we now expect them and wonder why the heck more aren’t happening. Why isn’t there a cure for Alzhiemer’s yet? Can’t we get this Parkinson’s thing figured out before it’s too late for Michael J. Fox? What’s the hold up?
We want this same overnight success in our lives too, don’t we? I do, I’ll admit it. Daily I am dreaming up new ways in which I could be a huge success by this time tomorrow – a serendipitous meeting with just the right corporate buyer, one of Rachel Ray’s producers Stumble(s) Upon my Reba Ray page, an Oprah producer’s daughter receives On My Own Now for graduation. These are just the type of catalyst that make for big breaks. And yet, unless I have something for someone out there to discover, how could anything like that ever happen to me? Even Joe the Plumber had spent years building up a plumbing business before John McCain pulled his name out of obscurity. Think of any “overnight” success or fame and you will be able to trace it back to years – if not decades – of diligent preparation for that one moment that made the difference. Scientists, celebrities and Joe the Plumber make success look so easy, but diligence is their common denominator.
Instead of wallowing in despair about our future not getting here fast enough, we need to hunker down, put our noses to the grindstone and take care of the business, however small and tedious, that God has given us to do today. That might include cleaning toilets, washing dishes, writing a boring report, making someone else’s coffee or changing dirty diapers. If we do with diligence and a positive attitude, as unto the Lord, the task God has given us to do today, all these things will be added unto us in God’s perfect timing, which usually allots for sufficient development of our character so that when we do get “all these things,” we know how to put them to use for God’s glory and our good.
The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied. Proverbs 13:4
OK, I sought the Kingdom of God first, now what? I’m still not a huge success – I’m ready for this to happen already!
Even a fool-proof formula for success needs time to work its “magic.” The time spent in earnest seeking God’s Kingdom daily, day after day, is a practical expression of a good character trait that is behind every true success story: diligence.
In our society which likes everything to be fast and disposable, diligence is underrated. You might think it’s non-existent, but the advances in medicine, science, technology, computers and more are evidence of diligence. I work with an organization that funds research on hearing and balance. Each year they give out 20 or more grants to scientists working on tiny little pieces of the huge puzzle “hearing and balance for everyone.” To the average person, some of these studies seem terribly insignificant. For instance, one that was funded this year seeks to quantify the mitochondrial DNA common deletion level and total deletion load in the cochlea of people with and without age-related hearing loss. (Yawn.) And this is just one of the many, many studies in progress right now that will someday complete the puzzle and yield a headline: Cure Found for Age-Related Hearing Loss! There are so many diligent researchers out there working on so many problems and we’ve seen so much measurable progress and so many remarkable breakthroughs that we now expect them and wonder why the heck more aren’t happening. Why isn’t there a cure for Alzhiemer’s yet? Can’t we get this Parkinson’s thing figured out before it’s too late for Michael J. Fox? What’s the hold up?
We want this same overnight success in our lives too, don’t we? I do, I’ll admit it. Daily I am dreaming up new ways in which I could be a huge success by this time tomorrow – a serendipitous meeting with just the right corporate buyer, one of Rachel Ray’s producers Stumble(s) Upon my Reba Ray page, an Oprah producer’s daughter receives On My Own Now for graduation. These are just the type of catalyst that make for big breaks. And yet, unless I have something for someone out there to discover, how could anything like that ever happen to me? Even Joe the Plumber had spent years building up a plumbing business before John McCain pulled his name out of obscurity. Think of any “overnight” success or fame and you will be able to trace it back to years – if not decades – of diligent preparation for that one moment that made the difference. Scientists, celebrities and Joe the Plumber make success look so easy, but diligence is their common denominator.
Instead of wallowing in despair about our future not getting here fast enough, we need to hunker down, put our noses to the grindstone and take care of the business, however small and tedious, that God has given us to do today. That might include cleaning toilets, washing dishes, writing a boring report, making someone else’s coffee or changing dirty diapers. If we do with diligence and a positive attitude, as unto the Lord, the task God has given us to do today, all these things will be added unto us in God’s perfect timing, which usually allots for sufficient development of our character so that when we do get “all these things,” we know how to put them to use for God’s glory and our good.
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