life – Page 6 – Watch. Stand. Pray.

173 – Professional Lazyboys

Lounging around is healthy and vital, but it’s no map to successfully helping, teaching, and leading other people. The professional lazyboy is sneakier than the professional naysayer and, in his own lazy way, he can be much more dangerous. Call him out—of his comfortable seat, that is.

He lounges in his office. Laziness is his answer to everything. “That’s easy, no problem,” he answers as if on cue. Some things are, in fact, very easy, but he confuses easiness as a strategy unto itself.

The way to stay big is to be big, but the professional lazyboy has no strategy to become big. He sits atop a brilliant structure someone else built, but he gives no credit for the building and only takes credit for managing the decaying momentum from the pioneers who already left.

If business were a train, he would think the engine the biggest problem. Momentum is a given, to be taken for granted, never the resulting indication of good stewardship strategy. Therefore, in his mind, the engine is just a silly gimmick to fool those unpolished, badly-dressed, uncooperative fools who founded the organization that he perfected. Though the money and customers are dropping, that’s from the economy, stupid! If he hadn’t sold-off the engine to get rid of that obnoxious noise, the organization would be in worse shape because no one can read with that annoying whistle blowing and the dirty engineer hauling coal around the train!

Never learn and understand the inner workings of your company if you can just pay someone to do it for you. The way to innovate for the future is to follow the proven strategies widely published in periodicals, reviewed by journals, old enough to have made their way into college textbooks, and implemented by college graduates who studied those strategies half a decade ago. That’s cutting edge! Never do anything that everyone else isn’t already saying to do, otherwise you’ll never find your niche.

Find the formula. Pay for bulk production en masse. Money can solve all your problems, but never say so. It’s an easy formula, after all. People have already been doing that for years. Don’t change what works. Laziness triumphs!

Proverbs 26:1-16

177 – Romance Is Overrated

It all goes back to fantasy. One of the biggest—if not the biggest—driving force behind the worldwide cultural obsession with romance is the genre. While fantasy does well as a genre, not a lifestyle, romance is better left to the mundane. Rising divorce rates at the dawn of the second millennium were just too high to say otherwise.

So much money and emotion goes into the marriage rituals that families start out with a pocket too light, just to meet the expected norms. If a fraction of the resources for the performance went into dedication and loyalty through the boring normality of life, the divorce rate might also be a fraction of what it is.

My sister got married across the country and held the reception at home. Mom said, “I wasn’t there for the wedding, but I was here for the marriage.” Sadly, not many married couples can say the same.

Marriage can’t be strong and lasting if it is worshiped as a false deity. But, the movies and stories and lyrics in pop music push a cultural expectation that so glorifies relationships that are, in actual life, nothing that we romanticize them to be. Romance itself has become romanticized.

When one makes a promise, one must envision the hardship of statistical obstacles and determine to keep going with neither reward nor pleasure, merely for the sake of keeping the promise being made. If it’s not worth it then don’t make the promise. But, it’s hard to envision the granular features of any rocky road when hypnotized by dreary, starry-eyed songs about a fake fantasy.

Love is much more than pop culture’s expression of it could ever be. The Bible’s most recurring illustration for the human relationship with God is that of a man and woman in marriage. This isn’t literal; it’s illustrative, the most-used illustration in the Bible. Consider Song of Songs, Hosea, John’s reference to Jesus as bridegroom, Jesus’s parable of ten bridesmaids, and the Book of Revelation closing with the words, “The Spirit and the bride say come!”

The Biblical concept of undying, sacrificial, there-through-it-all love is the standard for actual romance. Marriage was invented in Heaven, not Hollywood.

181 – We Are Only Entitled to Sonship by Faith

We are born with no rights except the right to choose whether to believe and trust the God who created us. An attitude of entitlement causes us to lower our guard and our work ethic. Being entitled means that one does not need to work to keep what one has. So, thinking oneself entitled to what must be earned leaves one with nothing.

As our Creator and Redeemer, God loves us, sees great value and potential in us, and gladly crawled through crucifixion to ensure that we could retain a pathway to live out that potential. But, that is all it is: potential. Jesus gave us no guarantees on the results in our lives, only that we would keep a choice in the matter of our own futures.

We can’t even change our past. We can only affect our future.

Simply accepting God’s gift adopts us back into the estrange family of our natural birth. God made us, we fell, and He welcomes us back if we simply return. We are always welcome as sons and daughters to live in and enjoy His estate. But, what we do with it remains up to us.

This makes God’s unconditional love perfect. We are always welcome in His own house, just as children believe that their parents’ home also belongs to them—because it truly does. Just the same, everything children own belongs to their parents. They are family, loved, and have a place to belong. But, we also have complete control over results. If one can work, practice, learn, and earn more, then one has more rightly and fairly, not because of any favoritism.

We find both inner strength and confidence in our hearts when we know how secure we are in God’s unconditional love, along with knowing that we are entitled to no particular results whatsoever where our work is concerned—except that our results are earned fairly. What a gift!—that we have nothing we didn’t rightly earn except the unconditional love of our adoptive biological Creator Father in Heaven!

Even our bad results are our own faults, while unavoidable hardship strengthens us. This, too, is liberating—to know God isn’t just some meanie.

185 – Purchase Is not Praise

Patronage is not a spectator sport. Don’t fall into the passive-consumer worldview, which presumes that being the customer of a business or the patron of an artist is a kind of “endorsement”. Your money and your bills are not notoriety, they are empowerment. There is a difference. If you struggle at all with confusing endorsement and empowerment, then money in your life will always hold a glass ceiling above your head.

Jesus taught us to exploit “wicked wealth” for the good purposes of Eternity. Buying products from a company owned by wicked men is no endorsement of what those wicked men do nor does it say that you “believe in” what they stand for. Buying a product is only buying a product. What wicked men intend for evil, you can commandeer for the good of God’s kingdom.

The plans of the all powerful God Most High are not thwarted because He appropriated the quality tools that some devil volunteered to create at no cost. Sure, demons do evil things with evil intentions, occasionally performing quality craftsmanship along the way. But, if God interrupts their work after they complete their craft, but before their evil is consummated, then evil squandered itself and God had the final word.

So, purchase your needed supplies from whatever supplier supplies you best. Go and spread the goodness of those products, multiplying their effectiveness with your own creativity and insight. Eat the worm off the hook, the cheese off of the mouse trap, and re-set it to snag the fisherman and the mouse trapper. Buy stock in unethical companies in hopes that millions of fair and honest people will do the same, eventually taking a controlling interest and converting that company from good to bad, rendering all the efforts of evil an absolute backfiring waste.

See yourself as the solution, not the self-important spectator sprinkling little rewards of money with your power game onto the players you deem best deserving of endorsement. That is not the way to make a difference.

Patronage is neither agreement nor dissent, blessing nor curse. March right down your enemy’s road, not because you bless the road, but in order to take over his wicked kingdom.

Luke 16:1-9

189 – Act Sentient, not Addictive

A tree follows the rules that govern its life process. Roots grow down toward water, branches grow up toward light. Those are the “morals” of a tree and the tree follows them automatically. If a tree were to search for water in the dry, hot sun or grow leaves for sunlight in the dark, damp soil, the tree would die. Trees depend on “tree morals” in order to thrive and survive. The rules must be something for the tree to grow, even if leaves were for soil and roots for light—the rules must be set somehow for the survival of the tree.

Our own human bodies have some similar rules about where to grow arms and legs. But, unlike the tree, humans have the option to obey or disobey many of the rules that our survival depends upon. Consider many communicable diseases as an example. Certain activities make people more vulnerable to disease, other activities make people less vulnerable—such as abstaining from more vulnerable things and, in particular, washing hands especially before eating.

Trees follow their “tree morals” without any problem. As a result, they live and thrive. But, we humans have the choice of whether to follow “human morals” that empower us to live, survive, and thrive. Too often, we run counter to our necessary morals and, instead, make self-destructive choices. This is because God, in His goodness, created us with a choice. When we follow the path of life, it is not as programmed minions, but as a choice. God does not program us to love Him and choose life. We choose love and life willingly.

Our tendency to run contrary to the path leading to life started with the sin of Adam eating the only forbidden fruit, thus planting sin into our bodies. Because of this, we sinfully-instinctively gravitate to object to morals, whatever they may be. If trees could sin as humans could, they would object, even if their leaves were for the soil and roots for sunlight.

Our ongoing tendency to object to our own moral needs—whatever they may be—is nothing more than an addiction to lawlessness—and addictions never help anyone do anything worth doing.

193 – Introspect

Don’t just do something, stand there.

Think about thinking. Think about your own thinking. Take time to think about thinking. Think about how you think about your thinking—to think about whether you think about thinking the right way.

Now, if you only think about thinking about thinking, I’d just say you’re stalling. But, taking moments to trace how one idea has impacted different parts of your worldview can help you become stronger on the inside.

A worldview is like fabric. It doesn’t need to be elaborate or flamboyant, but it needs to be well-knit. Sometimes ideas are knit by a single thread, other times they are woven by warp and weft. Threads out of place, too loose, or too tight can make the entire fabric weak. Just the same, a thread that doesn’t belong can change things for worse.

A little introspection is no waste of time. Consider it maintenance, which can be overdone or underdone; your preference is not the standard. Many “personality” conflicts between friends and family stem from having different levels for introspection, accusing each other of thinking either too much or too little.

Parents who think of themselves as “hard-working” often have trouble understanding introspective children. Parents who are not introspective probably have at least one child who is. The signs are usually an idiosyncratic interest in arts or programming language—the two are similar since code is poetry and poetry is code. Introspective people are easier to understand if one takes a little time for introspection oneself. Introspection is an acquired taste. Ironically, if an introspective child becomes estranged as an adult, the gruff parent becomes more introspective so as to ask why. “Why did this happen? What did I do?” they ask themselves at last.

Too late do too many realize that introspection has its value. Do it yourself and recognize it in others. Be introspective at times, but not to a point where it interferes with work. If you struggle with being happy it might be good to take a break from your thoughts and just focus on work. That’s not the same as unhealthily avoiding problems, but, as the doctor might say, rest is the cure.

195 – Luxuries Differ

Of the many assumptions we harmfully make about other people, one of the widely ignored, yet all too common, is the assumption that other people have the same luxuries, opportunities, conveniences, rights, and privileges as oneself. There are fewer ways to so effectively incite the subtle wrath of Heaven than through this assumption.

Many posh, white collar, calm, upper-middle class leaders in society experience family problems, unforeseen groundswells that overwhelm their organizations, and even unexplained medical trouble that ends the life or career of a leader who was outwardly celebrated, leaving the family or organization in delusional disarray. Cities and nations are no exception.

No matter your class or race, if you travel enough, you will surely find a place in the world where “your kind” faces trouble from assumptions of a local culture or extra requirements making your normal life nearly impossible—but seems as “no big deal” to the government that crafted those requirements. This applies to everyone. If you haven’t experienced this, it isn’t because you have “favor” with Heaven; you just haven’t traveled enough to see it.

Limits on what one can and can’t do come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it is a well-earned prejudice in society, other times it is an urban myth invented by the movies. It could be law, language, or the level of education of a small town. Try using a high school vocabulary word at a school board meeting in a school district where the board of education can’t read above age 10 and see how quickly you get labeled as “verbally abusive”.

Sometimes, the luxuries and limits are about the time or means of travel. Extended family may come to visit you for the first time in a decade. They may have only one afternoon available for you. If you change their appointment at the last minute for the cleaning lady, you might never see that family again.

We can’t remove every prejudice from the world, though it would be wonderful if we could. Simply recognize your luxuries and that others’ luxuries aren’t the same. Ask first. If you don’t, Heaven will humble you through a subtle groundswell and you’ll never know why.

Zechariah 7:8-14