Getting it right - 2/2

We all do it to some extent, but I seem to spend a lot of time judging and analysing other people. Some of this tendency I put down to paternal training, some of it takes the attention away from myself, and some of it is just, let’s face it, is probably just arrogance.

Getting it right when it comes to judging others is blinking jolly hard, but its something successful leaders do well. As I’ve become more comfortable with my own identity I’ve got better at this, but I’ve always been jealous of those natural judges of character.

For years, even though this has caused problems, my web development company (Go Kiwi Internet) would make massive efforts to never knock another company. We deliberately kept ourselves vendor neutral when recommending ISPs to our clients. We’d work with anyone so that we had some degree of integrity. That was until Xtra lost the plot so many times, so badly that in November 2007, we refused to give support to any client using Xtra who had any email problems, and told them to change to another ISP.

Good job, Xtra. If you have the occasional problem, that’s fine. We all do from time to time, but if you consistently can’t get it right, then you simply don’t deserve the business. And the other thing too, is that when your support staff deliberately lie to try to cover your butt, then in my books you’ve got it wrong - big time!

In some ways, you can’t help but judge others. If a customer is shouting at you, you’ve got to assess that he’s angry. If they’re ranting about something unreasonable, or something that’s got nothing to do with you, then you’ve just got to make the assessment that he’s a loser, or that you don’t want them as a customer.

We all want to sort other people out. It’s just naturally within us. “I’m right - you’re wrong” thinking is the source of all conflict - wars, politics, interpersonal - and it’s called pride.

I got converted to Christianity after being involved in the Eastern religions. I could see a degree of truth to their teaching, but at the end of the day it was really just an endless circle of do-this and do-that, bead counting, meditation, chanting or whatever in order to “hopefully” better ourselves and to try to please God.

Getting “zapped” (for want of a better word) in a Christian setting then put me into an environment where I wanted to “get it right” in a Christian sense - theologically, they call it. I spent my first years in a Lutheran church. These guys focussed on the purity of the Gospel - that we are “saved by grace” - they definitely got that right. Then when I was at Valley Road Baptist, David and Dale Garratt led some pretty amazing worship - they certainly got that part right. Seventh Day Adventists have got the day right - the Sabbath is definitely a Saturday, not a Sunday, as far as I can see. I reckon that the Catholics have got a real march on the social justice and morality teaching (shame there’s a few a lot who don’t walk the talk though).

Every church I’ve been to seems to have got at least something right. This raises the question of how we get the spiritual stuff 100% right then.

While there are a few things we can use (such as wise counsel and to some extent our experiences and circumstances), I’ve worked out that there are just two things we need to help us get it right. Actually I cheated. I got them from the Bible.

1. The Scriptures and
2. The Holy Spirit

Getting a good dose of the scriptures really helps us get it right. The Good Book contains an amazing guide on this “living” thing. I couldn’t have ever got anything right without it. The bible even tells us so:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16-17

Magic words!

And then there’s the Holy Spirit - oh how I’d screw-up without His leading and teaching. He’s the one who gives us the power and understanding to apply the scriptures appropriately, in a given situation. Paul tells Timothy to:

Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.
2 Timothy 1:14

We can never get it right without the help of the Holy Spirit. People will always preach to us, argue with us, try to manipulate us and use us, but when the Holy Spirit teaches us something, we can actually get it right.

It’s the VICTUS IN AMBITUS way to get it right by leaning on the scriptures, and listening to the Holy Spirit.