Several years ago I was talking to a friend and he asked “Rob, why are you always so serious about life?” Now I found this question to be interesting because this was a guy that I golfed with, we watched football together; we had fun together and we laughed regularly. So you can see why this question threw me for a little bit of a loop. I asked him what he meant. He said “We goof around a lot, but when it comes to how we live our lives as Christians…you get real serious. Why don’t you just lighten up a little?”
I have had that statement made about me several times over the last 10 years and most recently in the last couple of weeks and you know what, I do take the Christian life very seriously. I don’t joke about it, I don’t laugh at sin…I don’t find it very funny and I do everything within my power to live a life that glorifies God. I have never really had a good answer as to why I don’t find jokes about sin very funny, but the last time I heard it I started thinking about it. I wanted to come up with an analogy to better explain why I am so serious about my Christian life…so here it goes.
Throughout my career I have had several management positions. In each of those positions, and in my time as a business owner, there was always a standard that was set on how we behaved, what our work ethic would be and how we would treat the customer. There have been several times that I have had to reprimand someone for providing poor customer service, not following through on an assignment or having behavior that was not appropriate for the workplace.
I was written up once. I was working for one of the world’s largest retailers, whose name will not be mentioned so that I don’t violate any Copyright laws, but let’s just say that they are a big orange box Home Improvement company. So here’s what happened. I had a customer come in and he wanted to order thousands of dollars of ceramic tile. That was not a problem, except all the tile would need to be from the same Lot number so it would match. Suddenly, that would be a problem.
It would take hours upon hours of time to locate all of this tile from the 20 – 30 stores within a 5 hour radius. My time was already tight with all the scheduling and ordering that had to be done, not to mention and entire reset of the hardwood floor section. So I set the note on my desk and went about my job; completely forgetting about this special request.
About a month later I got a page from the GM of the store. He asked me to come to the office. This was not a big deal; I was in the management training program and was being considered for a promotion soon. I walked back to the office a little excited because I thought I might be getting some good news. When I walked through the door, my excitement stayed in the hallway. He was sitting at his desk, looking very serious with a “Corrective Action Form” lying in front of him.
From the name of the form, you can guess what the conversation was going to be about. The man had called and complained. I had let an $8,000 sale walk right out the door, but it gets worse. He was a builder who ordered thousands of square feet of tile on a monthly basis and he was mad at his old supplier. He was looking to replace them and if I had performed well, we would have gotten a big boost in my department.
Now the “Corrective Action Form” was just that; it was a tool to correct an improper action. It clearly laid out the situation, what level of violation this was and what the consequences would be if I did it again. Let me tell you, major retailers who focus on customer service don’t take to kindly to dropping the ball like I did. It was considered a serious violation and if this ever happened again…I would be terminated. Talk about a wake-up call. Well I went on with the company and everything was fine, but remembering that experience got me to thinking.
I take my Christian life as seriously as I do my job. In fact, I take it a whole lot more serious than I do my job. Luckily today, my job is a reflection of my commitment to Christ, but that is not the case with most people reading this. I don’t do this out of a legalistic requirement; I do it because I don’t want Satan to have a foothold to discount my testimony. Paul repeats this theme a lot and puts it in several ways, but the basic message is this. Live in such a way “…that God’s message will not be slandered” Titus 2:5.
As I put all of this together in my head I wondered, how different things may be if God used this type of a system. What would happen if there was the possibility of a Corrective Action Form to tell us what we needed to work on? Would we still spend our time the way we do? Would we change our spending habits? Would we spend more time serving others?
I want you to try something for me…how about you live today as if you could be written up by Jesus?