October 14; Is Excellence A Decision To Worship?
MANAGEMENT BY THE BOOK:
365 Daily Bible Verse &
One-Minute Management Lessons For The Busy Faithful

Chapter Ten: Deciding 14 October

He replied,

“Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know.

I was blind but now I see!”

John 9: 25

Competence 

“I refuse to work on Sunday,” said the smug saint. “I will not take the job.”

“No problem,” I said having made the decision. “I’m not offering one.”

He would have made a good fit between what I needed and his skill set. We spoke of alternatives, accommodations and comp time off when we would have to work on the Christian Sabbath. But he would get at least one day a week off; just maybe not every Sunday. We had clients with emergencies and a business to run.

And I appreciated his needing to keep That Holy Day. But I needed more understanding of the Biblical benefit: For whom does the Sabbath work? Even the Jews would fight wars on the Sabbath.

I hoped my Fellow Brother in Christ would know that he could make the decision to live out his faith by demonstrating excellence in his work—even if he had to work on Sunday and take the following Monday off.

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Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893 to 1957) was an English crime writer who is credited with the slogan “It pays to advertise!” She writes on Faith and Competence in her essay, Why Work?

When my play The Zeal of Thy House was produced in London, a dear old pious lady was much struck by the beauty of the four great archangels who stood throughout the play in their heavy, gold robes, eleven feet high from wingtip to sandaltip.

She asked with great innocence whether I selected the actors who played the angels “for the excellence of their moral character.”

I replied that the angels were selected to begin with, not by me but by the producer, who had the technical qualifications for selecting suitable actors – for that was part of his vocation.

And that he selected, in the first place, young men who were six feet tall so that they would match properly together.

Secondly, angels had to be of good physique, so as to be able to stand stiff on the stage for two and a half hours, carrying the weight of their wings and costumes, without wobbling, or fidgeting, or fainting.

Thirdly, they had to be able to speak verse well, in an agreeable voice and audibly.

Fourthly, they had to be reasonably good actors.

When all these technical conditions had been fulfilled, we might come to the moral qualities, of which the first would be the ability to arrive on stage punctually and in a sober condition, since the curtain must go up on time, and a drunken angel would be indecorous.

After that, and only after that, one might take character into consideration, but that, provided his behavior was not so scandalous as to cause dissension among the company, the right kind of actor with no morals would give a far more reverent and seemly performance than a saintly actor with the wrong technical qualifications.

The worst religious films I ever saw were produced by a company which chose its staff exclusively for their piety. Bad photography, bad acting, and bad dialogue produced a result so grotesquely irreverent that the pictures could not have been shown in churches without bringing Christianity into contempt.

God is not served by technical incompetence; and incompetence and untruth always result when the secular vocation is treated as a thing alien to religion… accessed 11 Oct 2014

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I did not hire the upright Christian. Instead I hired a heathen because he could deliver performance I could see.

He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” John 9: 25

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