CNB: Christians In Business

When you go to work, you are faced with more peer pressure than you ever felt in school. You quickly realize that if you don't fit in, your boss may fire you, leaving you without the means to pay your rent, your car payment, your credit card, or your student loans. How does that affect you when you're surrounded by people whose actions clearly demonstrate a lack of relationship with their maker? Or even worse, when they are openly hostile toward him?

I am no one special. I do not have a magic formula that will make it easier for you. Primarily, I have three things to say:

• Try to live a consistent Christ-focused life. While there are many people currently talking about an NFL player named Tebow, it is not just his practice of bowing the knee in prayer that has gotten him his attention. He appears, based on the articles I have read, to live pretty consistently for Christ, even when there are no cameras around. You would do well to become more consistent about living for Christ on and off the job. Not that you have to pray in public or wear the sacred vest with the urim and the thummim on it.
• Make no excuses for your imperfections, nor look down on others and their particular sins. No matter how hard you try, you will never reach "sinless perfection" while you are here on the earth. That does not mean that you should not strive to live a life that is wholly pleasing to our eternal king. It does mean that you must not give the impression that you are somehow "holier than thou". The people you work with should know that you love Jesus of Nazareth and God the eternal father above all else. They should also know that you care for them almost as Jesus would if he was here.
• Earthly politics are not generally good versus evil. To my knowledge, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a political platform that is God-endorsed. Genuine Christians can have points of view ranging from socialistic to anarchistic to libertarian to nationalistic to ethnocentric to theocratic to secularist. Christians can have different viewpoints in regard to taxation, the division of economic rewards, the role of the state in education, and the imposition of forced medical treatments (down to whether a particular vaccine should be mandatory or not). Please do not wrap your politics in religious robes, as though only your viewpoint is sanctioned by heaven. Realize that there are some general principles implicit in the scriptures, but that some of those principles are emphasized by liberals, while others are emphasized by conservatives, or libertarians, or anarchists, or monarchists, and so on.

Above all, try to genuinely surrender your desires and choices to his authority and control. It will not be easy (we should not expect easy when we are "freedom fighters" seeking to overthrow a dictatorial rebellion against the one true master and ruler of all the universe).

I was working in the backyard the other day, trying to clear out some of the weeds that sprung up after the rains. The weeds included the mystery weed I call froblemacz. I was using a hoe and a shovel to uproot the weeds when I realized that this work would go a lot faster if I got someone to help me. So I contacted one of my nephews to invite him to earn a little money this weekend. He told me that he already had plans and would not change them.

Now, you and I can apply this to our lives as believers. You see, I finally verbally expressed my desire to live within the rulership of Jesus at an evangelistic meeting led by a man named John Wesley Fletcher. Sometime after that, I'm told, he played a part in the PTL Club scandal. If my life as a Christian depends on pastor so-and-so or evangelist such-and-such, I'm going to be turned away when he or she fails to live up to my expectations.

As believers, we are tasked with clearing out the undesirable infestations that drift in from the world around us. The world is obsessing about things like pretending that homosexual activities are acceptable, and criminalizing parents who spank their children, while ignoring the greater issues of rampant sexual sin and refusal to submit to godly guidance and discipline. We have to clear all that garbage out of our own lives in partnership with Christ Jesus, and we cannot depend on someone else to lead us or help us.

I cannot surrender and allow the world's infestations to remain in my life just because there is no one around to help me right now. As a believer, I must not be slack about attacking the weeds and their roots, even if it means that I only focus on one part of my life at a time. I cannot blame the weeds on someone else's refusal to help me combat them, nor can I blame it on someone else's failures. Sinful desires arise out of our own inner beings, sometimes because we are too close to people of the world system or that system itself. Remember Lot, who "vexed his soul" by living close to (and then among) the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Now, as for me, I know that I am predestined to conform to Christ's life. I realize that it will not really occur until after I have departed this earth. But that is not an excuse for lazily permitting known sin to remain in my life. No, I intend to focus on submission to Christ, and through this, to clear out many, if not all, of the weeds that present infest my inner being. I hope you're focusing on the same thing for your life.

Maybe it seems silly to say so, but believers should not blindly follow politicians. We should follow Christ, and our alliance with any politician should only go as far as that politician's programs, stated intentions, and actions go in the same direction  that Christ is going. If we hang our hopes on this politician or that politician, we are guaranteed to be offended, disappointed, or to mislead others into thinking that politician X is doing God's work. Government is important, and the Word tells us that there is no one who is in authority except they received that authority from above. But the truth is, every human government is in diametric opposition and firmly committed to a course of rebellion against the rule of God.

So it is important to keep in mind that if Jesus were to appear today to reclaim this planet for the eternal kingdom, nearly every official (elected, appointed, or merely self-nominated) in every level of government in every nation would seek to preserve their existing reign--they would oppose the imposition and restoration of the heavenly kingdom here on the earth--and would seek to have every possible resource thrown into the fight against Christ's realm.

Our hope as believers cannot be based upon any particular individual. People die. People change. People sin. If you've been deceived into thinking that any politician can be depended on to "do God's work" here on earth, you need to get alone with God and your Bible. If you are willing to hear it, you'll soon change your mind.

Over the past few years, I've been planting a garden in my backyard. At first, my vegetables grew quickly, and it was only late in the season when weed growth began to impact them. But I've noticed from year to year, more and more weeds invade the garden, starting earlier and earlier in the season.

The past three years or so, an unknown weed I've named froblemacz has been at the vanguard of the attack against my vegetables. This year and last, froblemacz was joined by an invasive grass that spreads its stem-like roots underground. For someone trying to be as chemical-free as possible, this is a frustrating turn of events. But it is also instructive.

One of the most important lessons to be drawn from battling froblemacz and friends in the garden is this: The important lessons in life aren't new. They are the same lessons you had before, only repeated. They are the lessons you learned in Sunday school, in church, at your parents' knees, and on that weekend trip to your grandparents' house.

We frequently let the things we once knew slip. We get our attention on other things and before we know it, these thoughts are no longer in the forefront of our minds. But if you examine your life, seeking to distill wisdom from your experiences, you will rapidly reach the point where you're covering the same things over and over.

I remember attending one of the local congregations and hearing the pastors tell us each week that they had something new for us. A new twist, a new revelation, a new way to look at it. I grew disenchanted, simply because they were so marketing-oriented that they could not tell the congregation that the Christian life isn't as much about new revelations as it is about living within the fullness of the old revelations.

"Instead you need someone to teach you again the basic things ..." is a stunning rebuke to someone who has been a believer for several years. But the truth is, we often do not hold onto the truths we are given, and so we never progress to be ready for deeper truths.

If you live a contemplative life, if you introspect to try and understand why you made certain decisions, you're going to learn some of the exact same things about yourself that you realized when you were twelve years old. If you read and study God's message to us (the Bible), you will learn many of the same things you were taught much earlier. Certainly, you will learn more, but if you won't listen to the repeated lessons, your growth as a person and as a believer is doomed.

Lamentations is one of those books that I've read less frequently than most of the rest of the Bible. I'm currently reading it for possibly the third time since 1978. This isn't going to be a deep theological treatise. But hopefully, it will help you, too, to overcome the inertia that contaminates our lives.

Lamentations is unpleasant reading. Well, I always thought so before. Lamentations exposes the raw emotions of someone who loves his country, but sees its people's continued rebellion against the God who established and built up the nation. The author, reputed to be Jeremiah, talks about his tears as he watches the final conquest of the country by a cruel and idolatrous foe. He watches children starving, soldiers being slain, run of the mill citizens being executed or chained up for deportation. All of these impressions are recorded.

One thing I've learned is that you have to read Lamentations, like most of the Bible, in your own native language. I really do not understand why so many pastors teach from the King James Version of the Bible. That translation came out in the early 1600s, four hundred years ago. It is full of words and word-forms that we no longer use, and which confuse people. It features a number of words whose meanings have changed (prime example: "let" is used in the sense of "to hinder" but we now use it to mean "to allow"). Further, the KJV was based on earlier translations, and so it superimposes feudal imagery (which we don't understand in our authority-less society) upon the societal structures of the Middle East (which we already have a hard time understanding).

Lamentations contains the earnest plea and prayer of one who loves his land. It is a book that we in the United States (as well as other nations, such as Canada, the UK, France, Spain, and Germany) really need to look into. At some points, I felt as though I was reading the newspaper. It had the effect similar to watching a movie where something big happens and they use slow motion. Say, a train wreck: you can see it setting up and happening. You want to stop it from happening. But you cannot stop it. Those who are responsible for controlling the engines cannot hear you and would not believe you if they did. And that is exactly what it feels like in modern America: the nation is heading for a major crash, no one seems to see it or if they do see it, they disagree about what to do to prevent it, and our leaders are pressing down on the accelerator, as though they want to make the wreck more severe than it already will be.

Sadly, the train wreck analogy fits both our own society present-day and the society of the Southern Kingdom (Judah) in the time of Jeremiah. Just as many of those who should have known better (e.g., priests and prophets) continued to lead the people astray back then, many of our pastors are doing so now. Do you disagree? Well let me enlighten you.

You believe that God put the current administration in office? Good. Scripture does tell us that God elevates (puts in office) and abases (removes from office) leaders as he chooses. That means, though, that God put each president in office, including in recent years Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II, as well as Obama. So, if you believe that, why did you grumble so much about President <insert name here>? No, if you believe that God specially-selected President Obama and anointed him for office, then you are obligated to also believe the same about President Bush II.

And once that happens, you'll realize that it isn't candidate X that will transform this nation and restore its greatness. It can only be the same God who made our nation great. The Jewish nation (Israel / Judah) had direct commitments from God that if he chased them away, he'd bring them back and re-establish them. America has no such commitment to rely upon. We need God's intervening hand to break up the schemes of the powerful and those whose every waking moment is spend planning how to draw the nation farther away from God. We need God's hand to work within our nation, bringing our hearts back to Him.

Lamentations is about a formerly-blessed nation being destroyed because they rejected the God that had raised them up. Yes, it was almost 3,000 years ago that Judah was conquered. But do not make the mistake of consigning its message only to that time period. It is an example for us today.

Reading Lamentations, if you're at all aware of what's going on around you, should make you focus your attention on knowing and serving our God and Father through Jesus Christ and on praying for our nation and its leadership to turn from their stubbornly wicked course and head back into a state of obedience.

As a believer, I am constantly being reminded of parallels between real life as a Christian and the agricultural parables in Matthew 13. A few years ago, I started a little vegetable garden in the back yard. The first couple of years, we had bountiful crops: tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, squash, and even carrots one year. Then, the weeds began to overpower the crops.

This Summer, even though I worked close enough to home that I was able to come home and dig weeds nearly every weekend, the weeds (and a type of grass that spreads by horizontal stems and roots below ground) completely overpowered everything I planted: garlic, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, squash, melons, corn (maize to those outside the US), carrots, radishes, beets. Only a few cherry straggly tomatoes and some sunflowers survived. The froblemacz (my name for a particular and invasive weed that we've battled the last few years) and its friends were everywhere, contending for light, water, and nutrients that rightly belonged to my veggies.

It occurred to me that we needed help. I can see why a farmer would turn to pesticides (we're trying to keep it more or less natural here). That is to say that providing water to a parched area and doing some digging will turn up some latent seeds which you may not have even known were there--and probably do not desire--and those seeds will begin to sprout.

As always, some of those seeds are transients, carried in from the surrounding area by wind, birds, underground roots, or "an enemy" who intentionally fouls your crop. Others are dormants that have been there for years, just unseen and unrecognized. Still others may be carried in by your own actions: you obtain a cheap soil amendment or some random organic matter and put it in the soil, only to find out later that unwanted plants (weeds) are growing in your lot.

Perhaps you're a believer, but you're participating in activities that bring harmful influences into your life. Perhaps you're surrounding yourself with non-believers and turning a judgmental eye toward those who know and love our savior. Or perhaps you just have the unrealistic expectation that only the things you intentionally cultivate will grow, rather than things you didn't even know were there in the first place. Or maybe you just don't see anything wrong with <insert name of activity here> and don't understand why other believers trip over your participation.

Whatever it is, you risk fouling your crop and ruining your life if you're letting the world and its pleasures and pressures have more control over you than the message from heaven (the Bible). Get yourself a Bible in plain English (NOT King James Version, which uses English from 400 years ago), such as the NIV, the CEV, or the NLT. Read it and seek to understand just what is being said to you.

Here's the key: just as with the garden, you have to get a jump on extracting the weeds. Otherwise, your plants will be so closely surrounded that you'll be unable to battle the weeds without damaging the produce which you hope to present to the ruler at the end-time harvest. Weeds, in this sense, are often things which are perfectly okay in other contexts, but when they begin to displace and to replace and to remove your relationship with Christ and to alter your conduct in ways that don't fit with a committed Christian life, they must be destroyed.