Sometimes in churches on autumn Sunday mornings, you’ll hear a more raucous response to a mention of a pro football team than a mention of a transformed life, miracle or the sovereignty of God. I’ll often hear people talk about the latest communiques from a celebrity or business icon. I rarely hear people talk about what God is saying or doing in their lives or in others’ lives around them. They have no connection to the celebs, Elon Musks, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates of the world. Christians are supposed to have a relationship with Christ and intimately know and be known by Him. So how come our enthusiasm and commitment is higher with people we don’t know?
We cannot be motivated by, committed to or enthusiastic about people we don’t know anything about. We might be attracted to people whose reputation we know in terms of their success. Less publicly, we might want to be like a person whose values we resonate with. Politically, we’ll emulate people who identify as part of our “tribe” and promote their ideas and proposals, while we dismiss and denigrate those suggestions and analyses from the other “tribe.” We also want to be like, listen to and are motivated by people our admirable peers follow. We want to belong to the “cool kids,” the right cliques. And we’ll do whatever it takes to stay in the tribe, the group.
At the beginning of our spiritual formation, we adopt the faith of our parents. And then reject it perhaps if our parents are untrustworthy or hypocritical. And then we adopt the faith of our peers. Until they might reject us for some reason and then we reject their faith. It becomes our faith when we engage with the living Christ and our faith is tested by crisis—such as disaster, doubt, discouragement. We come through a trial and our faith is our own and not based on our parents or our peers or celebrity endorsement. Likewise, earthly leaders will stop motivating us, enthusing us if they prove untrustworthy, too many failures, have different values perhaps by rejecting something about us (our being, our lifestyle, our aspirations).
Who is Christ that He should inspire us, increase our enthusiasm and commitment? Many authors and speakers have pointed out that Christ’s earthly life is not one to inspire us. He wasn’t wealthy, had few committed followers, didn’t erect any buildings or personally write any books like Plato did. He had many lukewarm followers who wandered away if He didn’t heal them or the opposition became too strong. He was criticized, persecuted, killed. What He left behind was a collection of people who “do things” in His Name. Most of those things and people, we like; some we don’t. Those that call ourselves followers probably started out by following others who followed Him.
We do know some things about Christ and His character. We know some things about what He values too through His teachings and earthly life. We might find Him trustworthy: I often challenge people to rate Him on a scale of 1-10 in the trust dimensions of competency, dependability, integrity, acceptance of our weaknesses, openness/communication of His vision, goals, heart. (At times, I’ve scored God low on punctuality and openness.) Like dependability and acceptance, some proponents of trust add helpfulness and gratefulness (i.e. we trust those who help us—unless you’re selfish—and are grateful when we help them). We also tend to like those who like us (not just are like us, but enjoy being with us).
We might blithely say we trust God but struggle to let go of control. Even in business, more than half of managers don’t trust upper management. A recent survey by Trust Edge put this number at 87%—almost 9 out of 10 employees. If we trust ourselves more than the other person, we’ll relinquish “control” reluctantly; those who are risk intolerant may find themselves in this boat.
When there’s a lack of trust—more than half, 9 out of 10—it’s hard to be enthusiastic, committed, motivated to keep going in the organization—the church, as a follower of Christ. Studies and anecdotes show that methods to increase motivation fall flat because they appear manipulative if the leadership is not trusted—at minimum, doesn’t have integrity. If we find we don’t trust Him, perhaps we need to pray like the father whose son was possessed by a violent demon, “I do believe but help me overcome my unbelief.” (Mark 9.24) Christ helped the father with His unbelief. Christ helped the disciple Thomas, who refused to believe Christ had been resurrected solely on the basis of his close friends’ testimony. He wanted to touch Christ’s body and see Him. Christ honored that; Christ allowed Him to experience what He needed to carry Him through. (John 20.25)
Believing is seeing. If we believe someone is always late to meetings, that’s what we’ll see; we’ll overlook the times he/she are on time. If we believe God isn’t dependable or have integrity, we’ll see those instances where He let us down. We’ll overlook the times He was faithful and fulfilled His promises. Perhaps like the Harvard Business Review article cited on the blog post link above, the initial elements of trust have more to do with us than with the leader who’s trying to maintain or increase our motivation.
Perhaps the dearth of enthusiasm and commitment on the part of Christ’s followers is because most of us haven’t learned to trust Him yet…because without trust, no elements of motivation are going to work.
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