Making His Heart Sing

A young coachee asked me to watch a short video with RC Sproul (I believe based on video comments) saying that the way to know if you're saved is if you can answer this question with "yes": "Do you love Christ even a little bit?" (Don't worry about loving Him perfectly or as He ought to be loved.) But it made me think about a tv show or movie in which one character, talking about love relationships, asks another, "Do you know what makes her heart sing?"

So my questions as I pray and read are "Lord, what makes Your heart sing? And does what I'm doing make it sing?" Because if I truly love someone, I would want to make their heart sing. And I want to make Christ's heart sing.

Dallas Willard in his book, The Divine Conspiracy, bemoans the fact that we believers overlook Christ as Teacher. We rely on Him as Savior. We follow Him perhaps as Liberator. But Willard exhorts us to know Him through His teachings, and by knowing Him we'll be intimately familiar with how He thinks and feels. Isn't that the goal?

Christ says it's not just deeds that create the relationship: "Depart from Me. I did not know you." (Mt. 7.21) Though deeds warm His heart: "As you did it for the least of these, you did it for Me" (Mt. 25). And likewise, He admonishes people: "Why do you call Me, Lord Lord, and do not do what I say?" (Lk 6.46). 

But it's not keeping the 600+ laws from the Hebrew Scriptures. Christ doesn't teach that. Not even the Hebrew prophets taught that. Isaiah immediately in his speaking/writings condemns the ritual obedience of sacrifices and festivals and prayers without a heart willing to remove evil, do justice, rebuke the ruthless, defend the orphan and plead for the widow. An ox knows what makes the master happy. A donkey knows the same. Why, God asks, don't My people know what makes Me happy?

"Know Me," Christ seems to say, "and allow Me into your life so that I might know you. I want to make your heart sing."

Shouldn't we return the favor?

Biblical Business Radical: Another Take on Not Cheating Workers of Their Wages

 James 5 is one of those scary passages. My paraphrase for the first few verses: If you cheat workers of their wages, there's a special place in hell for you.

As I've thought about this, there are many ways we do this, such as performance appraisals, and I'm always on the lookout for other unacknowledged ways. One of the things I've realized is that I'm don't think it's a good idea to let the marketplace determine what I pay my employees. Their motivation is not my motivation: minimal labor costs, maximize net profits, attracting mediocrity, etc. Their operating values are not my values. Their perception of their employees' contribution to the company's success is not my perception. All kinds of soft characteristics are different too, such as rewarding for loyalty, engagement, innovation, results, etc. And then there's a sense of financial security that leads to an emotional peace that allows employees to be fully focused on their work rather than distracted with unpaid bills. And that's where the PayPal CEO clearly summarizes why he abandoned marketplace determination of wage ranges.

He also looked a new metric for all his employees: net disposable income (NDI) and realized in a sense he was robbing his lower paid employees of some wages. Health insurance benefits, he realized, are regressive when the company contributes equally (i.e. same dollar value) for everyone; lower wage employees pay a higher percentage for their portion of health insurance. The CEO wanted to raise the NDI from 4% to 20%. One of the ways he did this was to reduce the lower wage employee's portion of the health insurance premiums by 58%.

So instead of letting someone else determine what he pays his employees, he let the employees determine it. I'm not sure I'd take this to the extent of letting individuals determine their own pay. Lifestyle choices would play into it. There used to be (I hope it's obsolete) an old practice of paying men more than women for the same work because they had families to support. Married men got paid more than single men. Employees with large families received larger raises than childless employees. And why would I want to support a hypothetical single person's 5 BR, 3 bath house with a large mortgage because they see it as an investment but refuse to have roommates to offset the monthly payments. Average cost of living data won't work for large corporations spread over many geographic areas. However, smaller companies located in a single geographic area should have some idea of average housing expenses, food expenses and other deductions leading to an employee's NDI.

Biblical Business Radical: Return to the Land of Goshen?

[Originally posted on Compassionate Curmudgeon and Business Radical blog, also by this author] 

Consider 2020 and the upheaval for many businesses and the once-in-a-century recession that wasn't related to a financial crisis, or lack of demand, but to a pandemic that artificially shut down businesses and reduced demand for a most things outside of our residences. Many of us pine for the "good old days" when we understood the economy and the rules of business. We knew how to recover from recessions, knew how to market and sell to new segments of marketplace, knew how to develop new products and services to attract more customers and capture more profits. Those rules didn't help in 2020 and now going into 2021. Many business owners have adapted within their business models, but business as it used to be may not be recoverable as new work-from-home (WFH) routines have been developed. The auto, hospitality and airline industries may never recover to pre-COVID levels. There may not be pent-up demand waiting to be fulfilled when it's safe to be in crowds again.

So then what?

I'm reminded of the Israelites at a couple of inflection points in their history. The Exodus from Egypt was a key marker in their history and a point that is remembered yearly in their Passover/Seder meals. It is the model for many other transitions throughout Judaism, Christianity and Islam. However, let's take a look at it as if we didn't know the conclusion to the story.

The family of Jacob settled in a part of Egypt called Goshen (the Nile River delta). When they went there, one of the sons, Joseph (yes, of Technicolor Dreamcoat opera fame), was already there managing affairs for Pharoah's government. The population of this family grew from 70 to 600,000 men (plus women and children--the population of many 2nd-tier metro areas or the states of Wyoming/Vermont/Alaska/N. Dakota combined). By this time, several generations of Pharaohs had come and gone. The latest one in this story enslaved the Israelites--which is astounding that it happened without bloodshed, except the killing of male babies. (Moses' generation of men was lost.) 

Enslavement had nothing to do with disobedience to God; it wasn't a consequence of poor choices or disregard for the rules.

Skip ahead 80 years when Moses comes back to Egypt to lead his people.

What was the goal God could have communicated to Moses? "Hey, we'll stop this slavery thing so you can live in Goshen in peace and prosperity again." "Hey, even though slavery won't end, we'll bless you in financially." "Hey, the financial system won't change but you'll be in charge of your own organization--no more overseers." "Hey, we'll improve your worth by developing more skills than brick-making for those pyramids and farming because there's no way to build a power base from there." "Hey, we'll attract venture capitalists/private equity firms in the form of Sheba/Ethiopia, Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, etc to rescue you."

Instead, God said the "temporary" living location is finished after more than 2 centuries. It's become too painful for the Israelites to stay. Also, after generations of slavery, there was a mindset--business habits and routines--that needed to be abolished. The options of how to conduct business needed to be proven ineffective. In effect, following Cortes' example, it's time to "burn the ships" so that we can't go back into old patterns of thinking and business practices. Time to go to a whole new place, a Promised Land. A whole generation that had lived as slaves couldn't adjust to the new thinking needed for the Promised Land so the journey was delayed until the only ones who succeeded were ones who couldn't remember the "old ways".

What's your business's Promised Land? How much is it tainted by "old ways" thinking and acting? What promises do you need to focus on? How much of your team is ready for new paradigms and ready to stick with those new ways of conducting your business?