The Little Things
People notice little things.
If we want to show people the awesome of God, then we have to perform everything in a Jesus-like manner. I know it’s clichéd to say, it certainly is within the Christian community, that we have to behave and conduct ourselves like Jesus behaved and conducted himself, or rather, how we think he would have behaved and conducted himself, but it still holds accurate.
Incorrectly publicizing similar things like that have ruined a lot of things for a lot of people. There have been numerous accounts of morally questionable, selfish, evil, deceitful, and spiteful deeds performed by malicious Christians under the guise of “in the name of Jesus” and “this is what Jesus would do,” when there actually wasn’t any biblical backing to their claims.
That also raises the underlying question of if an evil, deceitful, spiteful, and selfish Christian can exist, period. However, that is a question for a different time.
More commonly, though, we experience the unintentional bad behavior of well-meaning Christians doing questionable things. These bad behaviors have also ruined a lot of things for a lot of people. A classic example of this would be a well-intentioned Christian trying to talk about their ideas of Jesus at inappropriate times and in inappropriate ways with people who do not want to participate in a conversation or with people who are not in a position to listen. We have all met someone who has done this.
More likely, us well-intentioned Christians have been this person at one time or another.
Cramming our ideas of Jesus and our beliefs pertaining to Christianity down another individual’s unwilling throat is a catastrophically ineffective way to show others how much we love Jesus.
That is spiritual assault.
Does assaulting anyone generally help improve anything? Not in most contexts. Except for self-defense. But this isn’t that, and I don’t think assault is considered assault if it’s in self-defense. But I digress.
So, bad behavior and spiritual assault are bad. What are we supposed to do now to let those around us know how much we love Jesus?
Simple: We show people the awesome of Jesus by having excellence in performing the little things in our lives.
In this context, the little things are work-related. They can be anything from our behavior when we think no one is watching us to the relatively minor and commonplace things we do at work: how we talk, dress, conduct ourselves, or complete minor tasks.
Don’t misunderstand: Doing “big things” to show Jesus-like love is impressive and important, too. However, little things are much more common and much more frequently seen by others, almost by definition, because of the very nature of being common.
Fortunately, we all have the capacity to do small acts with Jesus-infused excellence over a long period of time. Performing routine duties at work with excellence and cheerfulness will always get noticed. The fun starts after people take notice and start asking questions about how and why we do the things we do with happiness and undeniable good quality.
Really, the plan is quite simple:
1) Do commonplace things with cheerfulness, excellence, and have high-quality results.
2) People notice and become inquisitive.
3) When people ask how we magically ended up with excellent results, we answer them honestly and sincerely about the extensive role God played in it.
4) Then, when they examine our behavior and work more thoroughly, the practical and divine fingerprints of God will be all over it. And it will be undeniable.
That is how to show Jesus-related love in the workplace without being one of those annoying, overbearing spiritual assailants.
That’s a very brief overview of this book, Roaring Lambs.
Generally speaking, it isn’t appropriate, or efficient, to beat other people over the head with our religious convictions or to behave “holier than thou” in the workplace. But still, lots of well-intentioned Christians do it for some reason.
As an alternative, we should let the divinity and simultaneous practicality of God’s way of life shine in our lives through the quality of our work and actions using common, good behavior performed with grace and excellence.