Ecclesiastes 4 - Why Doesn't It Work at Work
Tom Shrader examines Solomon's wisdom in Ecclesiastes 4 about work and achievement. He warns against two extremes: working driven by pride and envy to surpass others, or showing no initiative and just getting by. Instead, He calls believers to put work in proper perspective - working excellently as unto the Lord while maintaining balance and contentment.
“You cannot be around a priority living study very long and not hear me talk about contentment - a sense of satisfaction, a sense of saying it's okay that I don't have everything that I want, it's terrific that I have everything that I need.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Reflections From the Top of the Heap (2002)
Recorded: October 10, 2002
Duration: 42 min
Themes: work, pride, envy, contentment, balance, excellence, purpose, wisdom, career driven, workaholic, lacking motivation, competitive workplace, seeking purpose, professional, midlife reflection, overachiever
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 4:4-12, 1 Timothy 6:6, 2 Corinthians 6:14, Luke 12, Matthew 6, Leviticus 25:24, James 4:6
Theological Themes: ecclesiastes, vanity of life, solomon's wisdom, worldly pursuits, temporal vs eternal, stewardship, calling, biblical wisdom
Full Transcript
We are in week number three of a series titled Reflections from the Top of the Heap. This is Solomon writing, and we're looking at the book of Ecclesiastes. If you have your Bibles with you, we're in chapter 4 today.
Solomon writes from the top of the heap, and I want to really emphasize that. This isn't a wannabe. This is a guy who's done it all. This is the guy who has arrived. He speaks to you with extraordinary authority, and he says, "If you think you're going to find happiness in this world and from this world, then you need to think again." And he says, "I'm telling you from a position of been there, done that," and that's exactly how Solomon speaks.
Solomon's Comprehensive Experience
I've been there. I've done that. You pick it. We looked at some of those last week. We looked at all those different options, whether you think it's partying, or getting a new house, or becoming a public servant, or building your business, or saving money, or being a patron of the arts, or it's sex, or it's booze, or being the biggest and the best. It really doesn't matter. In all of those issues, Solomon says, "I've been there. I've done that. And I can tell you with extraordinary authority and accuracy, you're not going to find happiness there."
Now, what he's speaking about is happiness in an ultimate sense. I guess I could say this really either way. There's one sense in which you were not created to be happy, and there's another sense in which you were. You were not created to be satisfied here on this earth.
Solomon uses the term that he's looked at life. He asks, "What's the gain? What's left after life is over?" What's left under the sun is the phrase. And he says, as we look horizontally around us, and we evaluate life in a temporal sense, and we put it in that context, what is life? When I'm all done, what can I say about it? And Solomon says, it's meaningless. It's vanity.
Where True Happiness Is Found
When I say that you were created to be happy, what I mean is, you were created to be happy with a person, and created to be happy in a place. The person is Jesus, and the place is heaven. Now, you will have snapshots of that, foretastes of that. There'll be moments of just extraordinary comfort or joy or excitement or happiness.
Haven't you even been involved in something? Whatever it is, this is heaven. Well, it's not heaven, it's just earth with a little bit of the misery removed for a moment. That's what it is. And we're walking down that beach. And I don't know what you do, but when we go, every place we go, Susan and I always have the same discussion: "Could you live here?" And it's a stupid discussion, because we're only going to live here. So it really doesn't matter.
But I really, at Cannon Beach, I really like that place. And I just like it a lot. And I was saying, this is just - one day, the tide was way out. And we're out walking, and it's just - and there are not many people around. And I said, "This is incredible, the ocean's crashing." And yet, I also know that I'd grow weary of Cannon Beach, I think. Just like I do of this place here.
Because we weren't created to ultimately be happy or satisfied with any person, any place, or anything here on this earth. There ought to be in you, and I think as you get older, I think it gets stronger, there ought to be in you this urge to get out of here. It's what Paul said, "I'm torn in two areas. I'd love to be with you, but I would love to be in heaven. I'm torn between these two places."
The Reality of Heaven
I really do think that as you more and more contemplate the reality - that may sound like a weird selection of words, but it's the reality of heaven. The fact that it's a real place, that's prepared for you, that's what Jesus said. "I go to prepare a place for you." There's this actual place where all the sorrow's gone, all the sickness is gone, all the aggravation that we associate with life and the hurt and the pain is gone. But beyond all of that, far better than that, there's the presence of Christ. That's what you're made for.
And for the Christian, that's our future, that's our home, that's where we go. That isn't the power of positive thinking. That's what the Scripture says. And Solomon says, "I want you to understand, that somehow you've got to get that heavenly perspective and get it here on earth. And somehow you have to see even the temporal in the context of the eternal." That's what he's saying.
So Solomon says, "Here, I'm going to give you my view." Ecclesiastes - the word means "the one who assembled the facts." Solomon says, "I put all of this stuff together. I've got all these things together. And I want to tell you, you are going to find vanity, meaninglessness, futility. You're chasing the wind. That's what life is all about."
Solomon's Purpose - Not Hopelessness
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, "Since I gave up, I feel much better." And that's not what Solomon's advocating here. Solomon is not building the case that it's hopeless, therefore give up. Or it's hopeless, therefore bring on the booze and have a ball. Solomon's going to say, "I want you to see it's hopeless. Now, I'm going to show you how to put meaning into life. I'm going to show you where you'll find real meaning."
Our Focus Today: Work
Today we're going to talk about a topic that affects many of you, but not all of you. We're going to talk about work. And by work, we mean employment. The idea of going into a job where you put in time and they pay you.
We're going to ask three questions. You've got them in your outline: How much should you give to your work? How much should you get from your work? How much should you share at your work?
And the first question is, how much should you give? There's that old expression - I hate it. And I hear athletes use it a lot: "We gave 110% today." Well, that just bugs the snot out of me, because you can't give 110%. It just bothers me when they say that. And you're probably not...
How much should you give? Here's what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 4:4-6: "And I saw that all labor and all achievement springs from man's envy of his neighbor. Notice the drive for success and the drive for achievement is oftentimes motivated by envy and jealousy. This, too, is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. The fool folds his hands and ruins himself. But one handful with tranquility is better than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind."
Ken Taylor, in his paraphrase of the New Living Bible, offers some help here. Here's how he paraphrases those three verses: "Then I observed that the basic motive for success is the driving force of jealousy and envy. But this, too, is foolishness, chasing the wind. The fool won't work and almost starves, but feels it's better to be lazy and barely get by than to work hard, when in the long run, it's all futile."
Two Extremes: The Fool and the Driven
So he says there are two things, at least in these verses. Number one, he says you've got the fool, and the fool's view is, "Listen, none of this matters anyway, so I'm just going to lay back and let somebody else do it. I may eke it out. I may barely get by, but that's all that matters."
What I focused on is the first part of this, and I think it's right, when he's saying, "Listen, the motive here is envy." The motive that drives us so often is jealousy and it's pride. It's achievement for not just achievement's sake or even personal gratification, but it's for our comparison with others.
There was a gentleman who came along right after Ali, who was the heavyweight champion of the world, Larry Holmes. I believe, had he not followed Ali and kind of that Frazier syndrome and all the others, I think Larry Holmes would be viewed as one of the great heavyweight champions of all time. He was a magnificent fighter. Holmes lived in eastern Pennsylvania. Larry Holmes used to have a great phrase. He said, "In Easton, the Joneses keep up with the Holmeses." That's what we're talking about here, the idea of keeping up with the Joneses. Just trying to stay equal and trying to surpass those around you, keeping pace.
Three Approaches to Work
When we talk about three different ways to approach work, we said you've got three here. They're on your outline. Number one is to drive for the top. That's to say, "Listen, I'm going to do everything it takes. I'm going to give 110%." What Solomon says is so often that's not driven by a love for work or a thirst for finding satisfaction there. It's driven by this idea of pride and ego and surpassing those that are around you.
C.S. Lewis on Pride
Let me read to you from Mere Christianity from C.S. Lewis. I've often quoted the phrase that Lewis uses about pride when he says, "Pride is the ultimate vice. Pride leads to every other kind of vice. It is a complete anti-God state of mind." That's how Lewis defines pride. He has a terrific line in here that he writes where he says it was through pride that Lucifer became the devil.
Well, he unpacks this idea of pride, and I'll do the best I can to read it in a way that makes sense, but just listen closely and follow along. He's talking about pride. He says this: "Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say people are proud of being rich or clever or good-looking, but they're not. They're proud of being richer or cleverer or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich or clever or good-looking, there'd be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud, the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone."
That's what I say, that pride is essentially competitive in the way that other vices are not. The sexual impulse may drive two men into competition if they both want the same girl, but that is only by accident. They might just as likely want two different girls, but a proud man will take your girl from you, not because he wants her, but just to prove to himself that he's better than you. Greed may drive men into competition if there's not enough to go around, but the proud man, even when he has more than he can possibly want, will try to still get more to assert his power. Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of pride.
Pride's Destructive Nature
And this last two paragraphs. The Christian is right. It is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring you together. This is really good. You may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people, but pride always means enmity. It is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity between man and God.
Here's what he's saying. The guys that were in this bar last night, they're pursuing a little booze and maybe trying to find an illicit relationship, but that kind of brings them together. There's the jokes. There's the laughter. There's the high fives. There's all that goes with it. But pride, by its very definition, pits you against another. It divides. And not just dividing man from man, but it divides man from God.
So he concludes with this thought: "In God you come against something which in every respect, immeasurably, is superior to you. Unless you know God as that, and therefore you know yourself as nothing by comparison, you don't know God at all. As long as you are proud, you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people. And of course, as long as you're looking down, you cannot see something that's above you."
That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with pride can say that they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I'm afraid it means they're worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit
to themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people. That is exactly right. That's what James says. God is opposed to the proud and gives grace to the humble. The very first step of salvation is humility. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Solomon lays it open, and he says it so plainly, I saw that all the labor and all the achievement springs from man's envy of his neighbor.
One of the first things that you have to check and constantly recheck is this issue of pride and humility before God. What are you going to give to work? Well, I'll give 110%. I think the question then is, why? How much of this is about you and about your pride?
The Second Wrong Approach: No Initiative
Here's the second approach that you might see. It shows no initiative at all. It just says, I'll live with the consequence. Kind of the case of Wednesday is hump day, and this is a great week of the month because this is hump week. And then when we get to June, it's hump month. This is kind of hump year, and all we're doing is humping our way through life, just barely getting by one thing over the other, working our way through from one deal to the next, looking to just pass time to just get out of here. What a sad, sad, sad way to live.
Years ago, I got a call from someone asking if Susan and I would come and speak to them. And I said, well, Susan has never done that. She doesn't speak in public in terms of from the front of the podium. And so they said, well, we'd like to have Susan come and you come and speak. And so it was a Sunday school class of people 55 years of age and older. So I said, all right, well, I'll talk to her. I think she'll do it.
So I said, we're going to do this. She said, well, I don't want to do that. And I said, well, we got to do it. So I said, let's go to this class this Sunday. We'll kind of scout it out. And then the next week when we're in, we'll have a little better read on it. So we go and we just kind of work our way through the room and all this.
So finally we come home and I said, all right, are you ready for this? And she said, I don't really want to do it. I said, look, I'll get up. I'll do the introduction. I'll set the whole thing up. You get up, do your deal. I'll get back up, clean up the mess, and we'll close. Trust me. Follow my lead. I'll set it up. I'll put it together. Just do your thing in the middle. She said, all right, slick. That's what she says.
So we go into this class and I do my thing and get it started. And I said, you know, one of the requests they had is that Susan would speak. So I've asked Susan if she would come and just speak this morning. And show her some grace. She's never done this before. And just be gentle with her. So I said, come on up, Susan.
Susan's Confrontation
And so Susan comes up and she was incredible. She just grabbed—she just looked like a natural. I mean, she just grabbed that thing and she said, you know, gentlemen, I just want to speak to the ladies. And so, guys, if you want to listen, fine. But I'd rather speak to the ladies if I could.
She said, ladies, I was in here last week and I had a chance to walk around the room. And I heard some very interesting comments. It's clear that you are women who love the Lord and love His word and love His people. But I heard comments like this. I've raised my kids. Now I've got to live for me. I've raised my family. Now I'm going to take a cruise and go up in the mountains and I'm going to live for me. I've raised my family. And you know what? I'm now going to live for me. I'm going to do the things I always want. It sounds like a Bob Torselli resignation speech where he said I 99 times. What an arrogant... is that obnoxious. And I have to live for I, I, I.
And then she did this. She said, you're godly women. I wish you could take your Bible and find one verse that says it's time to live for yourself. Thank you. I got up and I said, that's why she doesn't speak in public very often. You can't trust her out in a crowd like this. Well, I mean, that's the way Susan is. I mean, she's right to the bottom line.
The Biblical View of Retirement
There is that idea that I'm going to just kind of get by and maybe even get in this area of retirement. I think the Scripture is pretty clear that there's no such thing as retirement. By that we mean you can stop working for a check, but you can never stop working. That's just not scriptural.
I've got a friend who's actually one of the board members at PL who retired from his job about a year and a half ago. And I'll tell you, it was incredible. He took about a year and prepared for that. He knew what he was afraid of. He knew what he didn't want to do. He knows that a body at rest tends to stay at rest. And I mean, he planned to be active after he quit working for a check. And I'll tell you, it's been terrific to watch this guy. He's got men that he meets with all week long. He's decided that he's working in some mission things and he needs to learn Spanish. He spends two hours a day in Spanish. He's an extraordinary guy. And it's a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
It's okay to stop working for a check. It's not okay to stop. You're never designed to stop. When God's done with you, He'll take you home.
The Balanced Approach
So there's that case or whatever. And then I think the way we would advocate it is some sense of a balance here. It's the idea of putting work in its proper perspective. It's not everything, but it's a very important thing. And as a Christian, you ought to be the best employee or the best manager or the best owner in the place.
A few years ago, we used to do a Bible study down in Tucson at the Williams Center. Some of you know the Williams Center. This is a great building on the south, I guess, east side of Tucson. And on the top floor, there was a restaurant. And it was a great setting for a Bible study. So I came in one day, and we loved it down there. And we were packing
this joint out. I came in there one day, and the guy that ran it got me on the side. He said, "I just need to tell you, this is your last week here." I said, "Well, how do you know that? Is that a prophecy, or what is that?" He said, "No, we're closing tomorrow." I said, "Really? What happened?" He said, "It's a long story. It doesn't matter. We're closing." I said, "Is somebody else going to take it over?" He said, "Not that we know of. That probably will happen, but that's not happening now. We're shutting down. This is it."
So I got up to the front, and I'm setting up my stuff. The gal who was our liaison who works for the restaurant came up and said, "Can I help you get this stuff set up?" I said, "Well, we'll just do our normal thing. Let's get everything sorted." She said, "Let me get you something to drink here. Let me get you squared away. Is that overhead projector right? Have you got the light?" I said, "That's pretty good." She said, "Are we fine? We got everything we need?" I said, "Yeah."
She walked away. I said to the guy, "Does she know that this is her last day?" He said, "Yeah. I told her this morning." That's the employee you're looking for. She happens to be a Christian gal, and she understood that her job was not her life, but her job is very important.
A Generation with Proper Perspective
I'll just put a pitch in here. I think for the generation under me, the young men and women that are 35-ish now, they seem to have a far better grasp of this than either the generation ahead of me or my generation has. I spend a lot of time with young men that age, and I find them a source of great encouragement. I am very anxious to be able for us to pass the baton to them. They are far more mature and have far more perspective than we do.
I find them regularly say to their bosses, "No, I'm not moving to Dayton. No, I'm not going to work six days a week. I'll give you five tens, but I'm not going to give you six eights. I'm not going to do it." They're not defiant, and they're the best of the employees, but they have a perspective. That's what he's saying. There's a balance there.
It's not achievement for achievement's sake. It's not driven by pride. It's not driven by ego. It's not driven by having to have more than everybody else and better than everybody else and newer than everybody else.
Putting Work in Its Proper Perspective
What do you give to work? Well, you get work in its proper perspective. You've been around here long enough to know if you think this is an advocacy for apathy, you're wrong. It's saying you put work in its proper perspective, and you work hard. You should be the best you can possibly be at what you do. But work is not the only thing in your life. To treat it as though it is, is to have it in the wrong perspective and will ultimately impact you spiritually.
I've said this a million times, and I shouldn't say you cannot—I imagine there are some who do. But where is the person who is successful in the world and equally successful in the body of Christ? It just can't be, because both take a great deal of time and energy and effort. That's just the way it is.
How Much Should You Get from Your Work?
Here's the second thing. How much should you get from your work? Well, here's what Solomon says. Ecclesiastes 4:7-8: "Again, I saw something meaningless"—so he's telling you up front, here's my judgment on this, it's meaningless under the sun—"There was a man all alone. He had neither a son nor a brother. And there was no end to his toil. Yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. 'For whom am I toiling,' he asked, 'and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?' It's meaningless. This is a miserable business."
Right in the middle of that is the secret, I think, to perspective on life. And that's contentment. You cannot be around a Priority Living study very long and not hear me talk about contentment. A sense of satisfaction. A sense of saying, "You know, it's okay that I don't have everything that I want. It's terrific that I have everything that I need." I believe, spiritually, that's the missing component for many people.
The Partnership of Godliness and Contentment
That's what Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:6: "Godliness plus contentment equals great gain." I think he's saying contentment is partnered with godliness because it flows from godliness. When the psalmist cries out, "Delight yourself in the Lord," the psalmist is saying, "Be satisfied with the Lord. Be content with Him and who He is. And how He made you. And what He's given you. And who you are."
For those of you that He's given much, much is expected. Some of you are just vastly more talented than the rest of us. Some of you are brighter than others. Some of you have a different heart or a different compassion. The secret here is not for you to measure yourself against me or me against you. It's for you to measure yourself against the way God's created you.
We get this all in the area of money, all the time. So worried about what we're going to do with it. Well, Bill Gates—God's not going to judge you by how Bill Gates handled his money. God's going to judge you by how you handled your money.
Three Approaches to Assets
Three approaches in terms of assets and how much you should get out of it. One approach says, "Let's consume." The other says, "Let's accumulate." And the other says, "Why don't we become stewards of that?"
The consumptive one is the one we see all around us. Those are people who worship at cathedrals of consumption that we call regional malls. They go and they pay homage to the Nordstrom God and all the other gods. And it's consumption. We'd like to think that if you made 30, you'd spend 25 or 26 and save 3 or 4. But in reality, most people, if they make 30, are going to spend 30. But many will make 30 and spend 33. Make 50 and spend 54.
There's two great ways, I think, if you want to get just a feel for the
Culture that you live in. I think you need to do this. You need to be an expert on this culture. You need to understand it.
Two great ways to understand the culture. Number one, the advertisements that run during the day on television. Number two, Costco. If you go to Costco, you're going to understand the culture. And I mean that. Go to Costco. Go to the book section.
Understand this. Costco doesn't stock it if it doesn't sell. They don't have it. There's a reason they have 500 copies of Charles Barkley's new book. Because they're going to sell them. And they're going to sell them fast. And if they don't sell them fast, they're gone.
You want to know what people are thinking. You want to know about the culture, go to the book section at Costco. Because that's what they're buying. I was in there Friday. Right next, you got the book called New Revelation. It's the guy that wrote A Conversation with God, which is just whack. He's got a new book out called A New Revelation. In A New Revelation, he talks about this deeper conversation with God. That's sitting right next to it. I mean, right next to it is the NIV study Bible. These things are as diametrically opposed as you can get.
But see, the good thing about Costco and the good thing about America is, this is free market enterprise. This is about making a buck. This isn't about making a statement. This is how schizophrenic our country is.
Understanding Our Culture Through Daily Life
Or watch the ads that are on. Most of you are out during the day, and that's good. I get Monday when I'm kind of on my own. You watch ads that are during the day. It gives you insight.
There's an ad that was on there the other day that said, You have no credit? You have a bankruptcy? We want to give you credit. This is exactly what they said. All you have to have is a proof of a permanent residence. I thought, well, my dog is going to qualify for a loan. My dog can say, I'll live with Him. It's a permanent deal.
The Futility of Consumption and Accumulation
Look, here's what Solomon's saying. He's saying you're not going to find satisfaction in consumption. Nor are you going to find it, kind of the flip side, in accumulation. That's some of you that are so tight with every buck. I mean, you're still flammable. You're still wearing the polyester. You're still driving the car with 400,000 miles on it.
And this makes me a little sad. You're proud of how humble you are. That's hoarding. There's a fine line. I don't know where it is. You've got to find it in your own life. There's a fine line between planning and hoarding. We advocate planning. I'm suspicious of hoarding.
I just had a long conversation yesterday with a guy about this very topic. I was talking to Him about my own life. I said, you know what, we've got a plan. Now, our plan is probably like your plan. Our plan has just gotten whacked in the last six months or whatever it is. But we have a plan. But then we still have this other thing that's sitting over here, these other things.
A Biblical Approach to Planning and Stewardship
Here's what I think. I think you have to figure out what that plan is and what you need prudently. I really think the rest of it you need to give away. I need to give away. Forget you. I need to give away. Now, that's going to vary.
In Luke 12, Jesus tells a story. It's the parable about the man. Remember, He's a rich man who has a bumper crop. He says, what should I do? He said, I'll build bigger barns. Jesus said, you fool, this very night your life is required of you. Then He goes on to tell a parable or a story, a teaching time, that parallels Matthew 6 when He says, life is more than food, life is more than clothing. Seek first the kingdom of God. All this other stuff has its place.
That's what we're advocating here is a sense of success that's measured by God. In other words, you know it, it's stewardship. Jesus says this, the silver is mine. The gold is mine. The land shouldn't be sold because the land is mine. You are but, listen to this, Leviticus 25:24, you are but aliens.
We Are Aliens in This World
Let me say it again. Your home is somewhere you've never been. This is not home. The problem is, the more time we spend here, the more time it feels like home.
We were in a room, since we were speaking at this conference, they have a great room for us. A nice big bedroom and then a huge sitting area. I start a fire every night. You throw a switch and the electric or gas fire comes on. So I say, Susan, I'll start the fire. So I get the fire going. You know, the ocean's just out there beating around. They got a little area, they have an iron and an ironing board. I got to have that because I get paranoid if I don't have that. So you got all your little thing, got a little kitchen.
We're laying in bed one night and I said to Susan, I could live in this place. I need maybe one more room. I said, I could live in this place. It's starting to feel like home. We were there four nights. Well, if that starts to feel like home, how much does earth start to feel like home to you?
The Christian Perspective on Death and Eternity
So much so that as death approaches, we find people clinging to this. If I'm not a Christian, I can understand clinging because this, if I'm not a Christian, is as close to heaven as I'm ever going to get. When I die, I spend eternity in hell. But for the Christian, we ought to let go pretty easily. We shouldn't need a lot of extraordinary efforts made to keep us alive. This isn't even living. Real living is heaven.
That's what He says. So while you're here, you're an alien. Why are you falling in love with this stuff? Treat it as temporary.
The Value of Community at Work
Now, what should you do with this approach to work? We talked about share at work. In Ecclesiastes 4:9, 10, 11, and 12, He said, I saw something else meaningless. Two are better than one because they have a good return. If one falls, His friend picks Him up. But pity the man who falls down and no one's there to help Him up. If two lie down, they keep warm. But how can one man
A cord of three strands is not easily broken. The pitch that he's making there is for unity, even in the area of work. We've got three approaches.
The Rugged Individualist Approach
One is the "I'll go it alone" approach, and that's the American ideal. I'm going to do this on my own. I'm going to do whatever it takes. They fought the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, so that I could open a yogurt store. That's kind of the idea of this rugged individualism.
Let me speak politically for just a second, and hopefully it makes sense. I would classify myself as a free market capitalist. I would find myself as a rugged individualist. But let me tell you, that has a lot of liability with it, because pretty soon you can become insensitive to those around you.
Did you see the PBS show last night on aging? It was a show on aging, and it was just people getting old and people trying to take care of them. There was a gal who had three children, and one of her daughters started working at age 14 in a Kentucky Fried Chicken and is still working there. Every four months she has to watch her mom, and she's the manager of this Kentucky Fried Chicken. Her boss said, "You do whatever you have to do, because we don't want to lose you as an employee." So every day her mom will sit in the Kentucky Fried Chicken for eight hours.
They're talking about how if we put mom in a home, the government will pay it. But if we say we just want to get somebody to come in and help us, the government won't. I'm not trying to figure out all these government things. All I'm trying to say to you is there's that idea that says, "Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps."
I'm reading Charles Barkley's new book, and he's talking about how cheap Michael Jordan is. He said Jordan's cheap—Jordan doesn't tip much, Jordan doesn't do anything. He said, "We're walking along one day, and I gave some money to a homeless guy, and Jordan pulled me aside and said, 'Listen, if he can ask you for money, he can say, Welcome to McDonald's. Don't give him anything.'" Well, somewhere in there, you've got a whole group of people around you who can't help themselves. What do you do in that? One idea says, "I'm just going to get whatever I can."
The Compromising Approach
The other approach that we wouldn't like would be the pragmatic, compromising approach. For us as Christians, this comes into play because we know from 2 Corinthians 6:14 that we're not to be unequally yoked. We have to be very careful about our contact, especially with unbelievers.
I see this in marriage all the time. I see guys that fall in love, and they've got this cute little girl, and she's just cute and petite, and that's all the guy's thinking about. Well, where is she with the Lord? "Oh, she's for Him, I think." Well, that's it, and boom, there they go. Or a gal that says, "Here's this guy, and I'm a little older, and I don't know if I'm going to find another guy. Here's this guy, and he's not really a believer, but I think he's a believer, but I don't think he's a believer. It doesn't really matter. He's got good financials. He's pretty stable, and I'm just going to marry him." And after all—this is my favorite—"He's this close to coming to the Lord." Now, if they'd been married about fifteen years, she's driven him this far away, but nonetheless, she was that close initially.
Well, these unholy alliances are scary. You need to be very careful at work, in your life. You have to be careful in the area of compromise. Clearly, that verse, 2 Corinthians 6:14, tells us to be very careful in the relationships that we bind ourselves to. Compromise is an ugly thing, generally. If you find yourself in this position—"I know what I'm doing is legal, but I'm not sure it's ethical"—you're compromised.
The Interdependent Approach
So what do we opt for? Obviously, we look not for independence, but some sort of interdependence—some sort of acknowledgement that you need other people around you.
When we started Priority Living in January of 1991, the most frequently asked question—and I don't get it anymore, but everybody said the same thing—was, "Are you going to have a board of directors?" I said yes, and we have a board of directors. The board of directors has evolved over the years into a fairly loosely knit structure. These guys have primarily three areas that I look to them for, or they would see themselves in.
One is in the area of money. In any organization, money is an issue, and you just need to know that. If you give money to me, it goes into that red folder over there, and somebody picks it up and takes it away. I don't have a checkbook. I don't know where the checkbook is. There's an administrator, independent, who handles all the money, does all the financial work. Every month, the board gets a fairly detailed financial report on a monthly basis. So they look at the money.
Almost always, there's a board member in one of the studies. We see those guys to monitor doctrine. Is Tom saying something heretical? We don't want that.
And then, in another sense, they monitor my own life. Les Taylor and Jerry Smith watch me. What's the relationship with Susan? That's there. That's as much as you can have. You can crank it down more than that, but that's where we're comfortable.
Do you have a board of directors? You're all bent out of shape to see if I've got one. How about you? Is it possible you need somebody to help you in the area of finance and oversee your doctrine and help you grow and make sure your life is okay? See, that's what Solomon's saying. You're not meant to go this thing alone.
All of a sudden, you're going to be like that rich man in Luke 12 who all of a sudden has this bumper crop and says to his favorite counselor himself, "What shall I do? What shall I build?"
The Balance We Need
So the message is this. Why doesn't it work at work? Well, it won't work at work if I'm trying to give it 110%, if I'm trying to consume or accumulate, or if I'm trying to go this alone.
In this area of work and really in the area of life, I've got to have, and I hate this word, but I'm going to use it, balance. I've got to have some sense of what is a fair, reasonable expectation of what I'm willing to give for this. And if I'm not willing to give it, I need to be willing to walk. Are you there? Have you got that?
Because without it, Solomon says this is all meaningless.
Next week, here's what we're going to look at. Next week, ground rules for dealing with God. How do you approach God? How do you deal with Him? We'll look at that next week when we get together.
Father, help us see this truth. Let it change our lives. God, thank You for Jesus, for His life, for His death. We pray to You in His name. Amen.