Undercover Pastor

Last season, I really enjoyed watching Joan of Arcadia, a show about a young woman who sees and hears from God in the form of many different people who speak to her. In it’s first season, the show’s view of God was pretty good. Sure, “God” was a bit of a universalist (never a mention of Jesus, e.g.), but over all, the directions “God” gave to Joan were consistent with the God we know through Jesus Christ.

Things never went in a nice line from point A to a predictable point B, but when Joan followed God’s direction, people were helped. When she resisted or defied God, people (sometimes including Joan) were hurt – again usually in some unpredictable way. That’s how God works. We don’t always know why we need to do things, but if God guides us to do them, following leads to positive results.

But in season two, “God” has been sending Joan on some kind of “divine scavenger hunt.” Even when she does exactly what God says (which happens much more often this season), the results are usually ambiguous at best. Frequently, the outcome is that Joan collects some interesting experience. Not infrequently, someone is hurt be Joan’s actions. God seems capricious. It’s less like season one’s “see how self-sacrifice can make the world a better place” and more like “I hope the ordeal I just put you through will teach you something about life.” That’s just not my experience of how the real God works.

You can still get something good out of it, and I’d rather see this show even as it is than another reality show or another show about the occult. At least it gets people to engage questions of theology. In fact, Teresa Blythe has produced a study guide for Joan of Arcadia that can be used in churches.

Still, I hope that “God” gets over this phase of getting Joan to run through the maze to get a piece of cheese that is more-often-than-not snatched away at the last minute. Enough people think of God that way without a TV show to encourage it.

So I read today that HP fired controversial CEO Carly Fiorina. When in the human resources field, my wife Eleanor always had working for Hewlett-Packard (HP) as a career goal. They were a company that for many years refused to lay off a single employee, and they were legendary for treating employees fairly and for managers who would listen and value the opinions of those who worked for them. They were known for doing things right.

That all changed recently. As result of a desire to get the stock price up, HP’s board hired CEO Carly Fiorina nearly six years ago. And she changed everything. I believe the layoffs started before HP bought Compaq, the low-end computer company. But when they did buy Compaq, they had to get rid of thousands and thousands of employees over several years – for a merger that was a huge gamble, a gamble that eventually failed.

You can’t blame the whole thing on Fiorina. She gave the board of directors what most of them wanted at the time – something big. But at what cost?

From the Associated Press article on the subject by business writer Rachel Konrad (February 10, 2005):

But, observers say, HP lost more than expenses and thousands of employees during the process. Fiorina erased the employee-focused culture once known as the “HP way,” focused single-mindedly on quarterly profits, and alienated employees. That, business experts say, ultimately may be her lasting legacy.

“This was a company that was the essential model of innovation, a great model of leadership style. Everyone used this as a model for the integrity of the engineers,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean of the Yale School of Management. “No CEO uses HP as a model for anything now.”

Jesus said, “For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?” (Matthew 16:26 NRSV)

People who sell out to “gain the whole world” usually end up losing the world along with their soul. In Carly’s case, she got a 21 million dollar severance package so it might look like she won after all, but she lost her job… and she destroyed a wonderful company and her own legacy.

What would you do in her place?

OK. I’ve lived my whole life in California so what do I care whether New England or Philadelphia wins Superbowl XXXIX? (To be honest, I’d rather have seen the Eagles win. The Patriots are running out of fingers for those superbowl rings.) But you have to watch the thing anyway. Not just because it’s the best time of year to eat chips with French onion dip (oops – is that supposed to be freedom onion dip?) Now, you have to watch the Superbowl because people will be talking about the commercials. In fact, I know people who only watch the commercials…

So what’s my point? Well, we all know that the reason for the commercials is to get us to want stuff that we don’t already have. And these commercials are the best 60-second spots that the experts can create to make us want stuff. So it bugs me that we’re going out of our way to watch them.

I heard a guy on the radio today talking about happiness. He said that when people are in true poverty, getting a little more money really allows them to change their lives and increase their happiness, but for most people in the United States, more money doesn’t increase happiness at all. In fact, accumulating too much only adds fear to life. What if I lose it?

If scratching and clawing for more money and stuff is actually harmful to us, it bugs me that there’s a huge industry out there working to make us think we need things. If – heaven forbid – we slow down buying stuff, they do things to get the economy going again like giving us a tax rebate check to get us to spend more money.

Now isn’t the whole thing circular? The price of things like houses and cars goes up because of demand and because people are making more money now (partly because so many families now have two incomes) and that requires us to try to make more money to get nice houses and cars. Where does it end? The simple house my family bought last year costs twice as much as it did a few years ago, but what choice do we have? You have to live somewhere, and this is where my job is…

It becomes all-consuming. And I have to fight myself and the marketers to live simply, be satisfied with what I have, and not buy into the line that I need to provide all kinds of stuff for my family in order to be a good husband and father. When I allow myself to fall prey to that kind of thinking, it’s hard to think about anything else – including what God wants for my life and for my family.

I guess Jesus was right. No big surprise there. In the parable of the sower, the seed being planted is God’s word. And in some, it starts to sprout but is choked before it bears any fruit. Here’s how Matthew’s gospel tells it: “As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.” (Matthew 13:22, NRSV)

So don’t get choked! Do we really need a brand new Diet Pepsi truck, even if P. Diddy is driving one?