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Thursday, January 06, 2005
I remember my three "bosses" from my high school part-time jobs.
First off was Bill, who was my boss at the golf course. I was on the crew that worked on the course, making sure the grass was mowed, sand traps raked, tees marked, trash emptied, holes replaced and flags in the right place. One time our golf course was going to have a professional event that was going to be on television and my boss was having a rough summer with the greens. It was his decision to paint the greens so they'd look good for TV. He also had us rip poison oak off some trees without giving us gloves. He made us weed eat around the creeks without boots or anything and we were in constant fear (real or imagined) of snakes. Bill also cussed at us if we goofed up (which was often) and had us work for club members on company time.
It was hard to take orders from Bill. So, I told my mom I wanted to quit. She said I could as soon as I lined up another job.
Enter Mary. She managed the movie theatre I worked at for the rest of my high school years. At least for a couple of months. Mary wrote pornography for magazines to make extra money in her spare time(no kidding). She didn't care much for company policy, which was both good and bad. Good in that we could pretty much let all our friends in free and give them free sodas and popcorn, bad in that people wouldn't show up when they were scheduled and wouldn't call so Mary would guilt me into staying. We really didn't respect Mary, which made it hard to take orders, so it wasn't long before she was fired. Two months she was there, I think.
Then came Jeff. He was a college student and a good guy but he was also a pushover for the home office. The reason they hired him was to "clean up" all the bad habits that Mary caused. The reason we didn't like him was that he was one of "us" and then got promoted, and now he was having to be our boss with all the real policies in place. He was hard nosed about it...and I guess we understood, but we didn't like him much, or respect him much after the promotion. He was there the last year and 3/4ths I worked.
I mean, we all have those authority figures that we don't like too terribly much. Maybe it's a parent who constantly says things that amount to "do as I say, not as I do" moments. Maybe it's a school teacher who is too lenient. Maybe it's a coach that's too rigid and structured. Maybe it's a boss that has no clue. Maybe it's a politician that is crooked. Maybe it's a member of the clergy who doesn't live out what they preach. I could go on and on with examples of authority figures we don't like.
I wonder why that is. My suspicion is that we like to be the boss of ourselves. There's something within us that naturally resists anyone telling us what to do. We like to be self-made. We like to do our own thing. We don't like to be judged, so we like to do what we want to do when we want to do it.
There's a problem with that.
It's foolish. Really foolish.
Check out Proverbs 1: 7.
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
Fools despise wisdom and instruction."
First of all, you need to understand that "fear" of the Lord here doesn't mean that you should fear Him the way you might fear a ruthless authority. Not at all. The word really means to "revere" or to give proper respect to. Now, if we saw God I'm sure it would involve shaking and other signs of real fear...but the idea here is to understand that God is God and we are not Him.
God has the right to be our sovereign because He is precisely Who He says He is.
And if you grasp this, you are at the very beginning of learning. It's the foundation of everything else. Because, if this premise is off, all our findings will be off (more on that later when we discuss John 8:31 later this week).
So understanding that God is God is the first step. That's wise.
However, there's a consequence if we don't. If we do try to live our own lives, be our own boss, do things our way, well...
...the Bible calls us fools.
Note that fools despise two things:
First, wisdom. They despise it. They look down on it with contempt. They regard it as worthless.
They also despise instruction. They don't want to change.
In other words, the mark of a fool is somebody who tries to live the way they want to live, making their own rules...and then doesn't want to learn, grow and change.
I've used the quote before: "The greatest lie I have ever contended with is this: That life is a story about me." Donald Miller said that. And if we live that lie, we're fools.
I guess the problem I have is that we all have areas of our lives we want to make the rules for. So, thinking through today, why not find one of those and give it over to Him?
That's the very first step in transforming your mind...thinking like God thinks...is to realize He is God and I am not...and He is, indeed, my "boss."
Brent 4:04 AM
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