Sounds Good, But Is It The Truth? (2a)

  

This is a postscript to yesterday’s post, in which I raised the hypothetical situation in which a doctor does not tell a patient with cancer that he has cancer, but rather tells him that he is in great health. Today I want to draw on my observations in the workplace, which are not hypothetical. My point in this is to demonstrate that when we fail to tell others the full Gospel message, which includes the news that we have something far worse than cancer (sin and spiritual death), that we are not actually loving and caring for others, but rather putting ourselves first; we are not thinking about their feelings, but rather our own.

 

One of the most difficult things I encountered in business was teaching my managers the importance of constructively telling their underperforming employees the truth about their performance and in showing them what improvements were needed and how to implement those improvements. A conversation might go like this:

 

“Susan, I see that Frank once again failed to get his reports in on time this week, I’ve gotten another email from the corporate office about it. Our client contract stipulates that these reports are due every Monday by 3:00 P.M.”

 

“I know Bob. I’ll talk to him again.”

 

“How long have you been talking to him about it?”

 

“I guess it’s been about two months now.”

 

“Have you given him a timeframe in which he has to meet the standards of our contract? Does he know his job is in jeopardy? Does he realize how serious this is?”

 

“But Bob, I don’t want to hurt his feelings, and I want him to like me.”

 

“Susan, do you care about him enough to tell him the truth? Would you rather he has a job or have hurt feelings?”

 

While these conversations were more complex and while they each had a history, this barebones discussion illustrates what I often heard, “I don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. I want the other person to like me.”

 

In other words, the manager, while often telling me that she or he cared about the employee, often cared more about her or his own feelings than the employee – that is, the manager wanted to avoid the unpleasantness of telling employee the truth. This also meant that the manager avoided investing herself in the employee’s hopeful improvement and avoided having to make the decision of whether to, at some point, release the employee.

 

Over the years I’ve seen men and women respond positively to the bad news of their performance when presented in the context of care and concern and the offer of help for improvement. Naturally, I’ve also seen folks vehemently deny that anything was wrong and reject all help. We can’t control how others respond, but we can control whether we tell the truth or not, and we can control the spirit in which we tell it.

 

One of the saddest situations I found myself in from time-to-time, was to inherit a manager who had previously worked for others who never gave that manager constructive feedback, who did not invest themselves in that manager – with the consequence that the manager not only never grew professionally or personally but thought that he or she was doing a great job. Then, when the manager’s department encountered difficult times, the manager was not only ill-equipped to handle the situation, but he or she tended to be resentful of any coaching since coaching had never been part of the person’s experience.

 

O dear friends, if we truly love others we will tell them the truth. The Cross is a stumbling block, and it is foolish, and it appears to be weak (1 Cor. 1:18 – 31; Gal. 5:55), but it is also “the power of God.” Paul writes:

 

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” (Romans 1:16).

 

Do we believe this? Or do we insist on not telling people the truth by not warning them of the cancer of sin, of spiritual and eternal death, of separation from the incredible love of God in Jesus Christ? Are we offering others the opportunity of repenting of their sins and way of life, and of following our Lord Jesus Christ? Are we offering others God’s gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ in place of the wages of sin?